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THE 

BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 
OF THE 


AMERICAN 

SUBMARINE 












































•j$* > 


FRANK T. CABLE 












THE 

BIRTH and DEVELOPMENT 

OF THE 

AMERICAN 

SUBMARINE 

BY 

FRANK T. CABLE 



HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS 
NEW YORK AND LONDON 
MCMXXIV 




V Y\VoS 


: 


THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 
OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 


Copyright, 1924, by Harper & Brothers 
Printed in the United States of America 


First Edition 
D-Y 


iv 


MAY -5 *24 

@C1A792250 





CONTENTS 


PAGE 


Publishers’ Foreword . xiii 

Captain’s Log . xv 


CHAPTER I 

The submarine's mission.—Development synchronized 
with growth of war symptoms.—British objections to its 
continued use.—American attitude on humane warfare.— 
Disarmament Conference’s conclusions.—Upheld as a 
legitimate war weapon.—Sims’s defense of its operations. 

—Submarine restraints on naval strategy.—Not yet tested 
as a fighting force against war vessels.—Its toll of British 
naval craft linked with Holland’s original purposes in 
studying undersea navigation. 1 

CHAPTER II 

Holland as an Irish teacher.—Birth of his submarine 
device.—His calling and hobby in conflict.—Crude devices 
of the past as guide.—The Merrimac’s exploits in the Civil 
War against wooden ships and her fight with the Monitor 
stimulate his submarine studies.—Ironclad ships foreseen 
as a result.—Strengthening of British naval supremacy by 
this development.—Consequent need of undersea weapons 
to curb the power of dreadnaughts.—Holland’s hostility to 
England a directing influence in formulating submarine 
devices.—Aimed to weaken British sea power. 23 

CHAPTER III 

The Confederate “Davids” as forerunners of the Hol¬ 
land boats.—Effect on inventor’s mind of the Huxley’s 
achievement in sinking the Housatonic. —Bauer’s submarine 
(German), Bushnell’s Turtle, and Fulton’s Nautilus as 
further object lessons.—Submarining as a discouraging 
pursuit.—Hostile public sentiment.—Practical undersea 
navigation science scoffed at as a dream. 39 

CHAPTER IV 

Holland’s task to raise the submarine from the plane of 
immaturity.—What an efficient submarine must not do.— 

His early design for harbor defense.—The torpedo prob¬ 
lem.—Preserving a boat’s specific gravity and controlling 
her descent.—Water ballast.—Adjusting a boat’s operation 
to the changing specific gravity of water, salt and fresh.— 

Jules Verne’s Nautilus as a fictional forerunner of the 
developed Holland type. S3 


v 








CONTENTS 


CHAPTER V 

Holland in America as an immigrant.—Renews his sub¬ 
marine studies in Boston.—Project shelved.—Marking 
time as a teacher in Paterson, New Jersey.—Approaches 
United States government with his invention.—Official 
discouragement.—Irish financial aid enables him to build 
a boat.—Trial in Passaic River helped by power from an 
improvised steam launch, with a beer barrel for boiler.— 
Inventor stays under water twenty-four _ hours.—Device 
derided.—Friends gratified by test and assist him to build 
a better boat.—Abandons teaching for submarine building. 

CHAPTER VI 

The mysterious Fenian Ram. —The engine problem.—Pro¬ 
jectile tests and their oddities.—Strange voyages under 
New York harbor.—Suspicions of designs against British 
craft, due to Fenian unrest in Ireland.—The Fenian 
Skirmishing Fund the source of Holland’s financial back¬ 
ing.—Irish-American factors in the development of the 
submarine.—Fenian aims and hopes.—Real significance of 
the Fenian Ram. —The modern submarine an outgrowth of 
the Irish question.—The boat and a companion model 
stolen.—End of Fenian support of Holland... 

CHAPTER VII 

Naval attitude to Holland’s device.—The Zalinski boat 
and its fate.—Setback for inventor.—Government competi¬ 
tions for submarine bids initiated by Secretary Whitney.— 
Submarine progress at home and abroad.—French enter¬ 
prise.—Secretary Herbert shudders at dangers of subma¬ 
rines.—Test of effect of guncotton explosions on water¬ 
tight tank containing a cat, a rooster, a rabbit, and a dove, 
to show submarines are safe from their own projectiles.— 
Further competition for submarine construction follows.— 
Simon Lake’s Argonaut type.—Holland secures contract 
to build the first American naval submarine.—The ill-starred 
Plunger. —Inventor’s conflict with red tape and gold lace. 
—Congressional committee hears naval experts on sub¬ 
marine outlook.—A step forward. 

CHAPTER VIII 

The famous Holland and the beginning of my associa¬ 
tion with its inventor.—The new boat as the parent of 
most modern submarines.—Her features and capacities.— 
Beginning of real under-water navigation in America.... 

vi 


PAGE 

64 


75 


91 

108 




CONTENTS 


CHAPTER IX 

PAGE 

The Holland as another suspicious craft.—Pending war 
with Spain makes navy authorities watchful of her 
movements.—Spanish warship in New York harbor in 
alleged danger of being torpedoed by a wooden projectile 
from the Holland’s gun.—Blind search of the elusive sub¬ 
marine by a navy tug.—Difficulties of navigation in New 
York harbor.—Navy officially recognizes the Holland and 
submits her to tests.—Dubious of her performance.— 
Changes in operation.—Crudities of equipment. 118 

CHAPTER X 

Tests off Long Island.—Clara Barton as a passenger.— 

Crew unconscious from escaped gases.—Mice as a sub¬ 
marine barometer of gas leaks.—Erratic behavior of tor¬ 
pedoes.—The diver who became a floating balloon. 130 

CHAPTER XI 

The Holland’s royal progress from Long Island to the 
Potomac.—Curious crowds en route attracted by the 
wonder boat.—Insatiable public curiosity.—Guarding her 
secrets.—Storage-battery problem and security from gas 
explosions.—Washington trials to win official support for 
submarine development.—Obstructive sight-seers on pri¬ 
vate craft.—Regulating the boat’s trim for fresh-water 
navigation. ... 141 

CHAPTER XII 

Naval skepticism.—Commander Kimball’s'support.—Of¬ 
ficial trials of the Holland. —Avoirdupois of congressional 
passengers upsets boat’s trim.—Thrilling descent stern 
foremost.—Japanese interest.—Ruse of naval officer to 
take a submerged run unknown to his wife.—How the air 
pressure (real air) affected a Congressman.—A submarine 
voyage not dangerous.—Educating the official and public 
mind.—Dewey’s favorable views.—Naval board cautiously 
recommends acceptance of the Holland and the building 
of further boats.—Admiral Hichborn’s dissent from the 
board’s criticisms of boat’s showing.—Training raw naval 
crew to run her.—Evading observation from naval scouts 
in night maneuvers at Narragansett. 153 

CHAPTER XIII 

The Holland a costly boat.—The Adder class.—Un¬ 
favorable comments on submarines from Admirals O’Neil 
and Melville.—The Fulton as a model for improving the 
new boats.—Obstacles in building her through enforced 

vll 






CONTENTS 

PAGE 

adherence to government specifications.—Theory vs. prac¬ 
tice.—Misfit materials and equipment.—Speed difficulties. 

—Foreign naval observers.—Endurance test to prove that 
a crew can live for long periods under water.—Pressure of 
heavy tide ends test.—The gale and flood which swept 
Peconic Bay, with the Fulton safe underneath. 169 

CHAPTER XIV 

The Fulton sinks in dock.—Crew’s escape through air 
pocket.—Patched up, she proves the submarine’s capacity 
for open-sea voyages.—Sets out for Chesapeake capes 
from Brooklyn in heavy weather.—A crowded craft.— 

Life preservers as a bed on a torpedo tube.—Deck crew 
up to their necks in water.—Puts into Delaware Break¬ 
water.—An interrupted breakfast.—Explosion, due to 
ignition of battery gas, blows a naval officer out of the 
conning tower like a cork.—Lacerated scalps and faces.— 

The shoes that landed at the bottom of a firkin filled with 
sugar.—Conduct of a coffee pot.—The Fulton out of 
commission. 182 

CHAPTER XV 

Holland and Great Britain.—Submarine devised to dam¬ 
age British sea power is adopted by the Admiralty.—Dis¬ 
belief in the new sea weapon.—Trying out the boats at 
Barrow.—Admiralty unwillingly recognizes necessity of an 
American crew.—Misgivings of inexperienced British as 
to getting back after submerging.—Tests in the Irish Sea. 

—Careless discipline by British officers causes explosion. 

-—The smoking peril.—Officially hoped that submarines 
would fail.—Navy resents their introduction. 190 

CHAPTER XVI 

Uncle Sam has a submarine fleet at last.—Performances 
of the Adder and Moccasin. —Sand-bar dangers.—Testing 
the Grampus and Pike in the pitch-dark waters of San 
Francisco Bay.—The reconditioned Fulton and the Lake 
boat Protector have competing trials before a naval 
board at Newport.—Structural differences of the two 
types.—Target shooting and a twelve-hour submergence.— 

Both boats sold to Russia. 205 

CHAPTER XVII 

Smuggling the Fulton to Kronstadt to elude the Ameri¬ 
can neutrality laws, owing to Russo-Japanese War.— 
Cargo camouflaged in clearance papers.—Towing out the 
Fulton in the night without lights to a waiting freighter 
off Montauk Point.—A destroyer appears and vanishes.— 
Stealthy work of shipping the boat in inky darkness by a 

viii 






CONTENTS 


floating derrick.—Customs officials discover they have 
cleared a contraband cargo.—The Fulton becomes the 
Madam .—My movements are watched in following her to 
Kronstadt to instruct Russian crew.—Preparing the 
Rodjesvensky fleet delays trials.—The Madam’s one hun¬ 
dred-mile run to trial ground in the Gulf of Finland.— 
Floating workshop comes to grief.—Isolated Bjorka.— 
Russian satisfaction with tests.—Dismantling the Madam 
for journey to Vladivostok.—Awaiting the appearance of 
the Tsar to inspect her—The Tsar considers the conveni¬ 
ence of an American citizen.—The Madam on patrol duty 
at Vladivostok.. 


CHAPTER XVIII 

Development of submarine-boat equipment.—Need of 
bigger engines.—A stolen inspection of German submarines 
at Kiel.—Germany’s tardy adoption of submersibles in¬ 
fluenced by British action.—Growth of Holland type in 
Europe.—Search for the perfect periscope.—Italy’s sub¬ 
marines.—The Squalo, with water-tight compartments, 
continues to run submerged with a ton of water in her 
engine room.—A French gasoline engine for submerged 
operation.—France’s submarines.—Identical with Holland’s 
in general principles.—Submarine building for American 
navy retarded by government indecision.—Holland boats 
for Japan. 


CHAPTER XIX 

A Pacific journey to Japan under war conditions.—Con¬ 
traband on liner.—At Midway Island.—Fear of the 
Russian fleet.—Yokohama.—Holland submarines at Yoko¬ 
suka dockyard.—Japanese hospitality.—Navy eager for 
submarine operations off Vladivostok.—Expeditious prep¬ 
arations and trials of boats.—No lost motion.—Peace 
balks submarine enthusiasts.—Japanese naval officers 
quick to learn and faithfully follow instructions.—Loss of 
a Holland boat with all hands.—Dead commander’s story 
of tragedy found in the conning tower on raising the 
craft.—A naval banquet in honor of the American sub¬ 
marine experts who taught the Japanese undersea navi¬ 
gation. 


CHAPTER XX 

Accessions to United States submarine fleet.—The Octo~ 
pus .—Testing her hull strength 200 feet down.—Contest 
with the Lake at Newport to obtain $3,000,000 contract for 
further boats.—Social effect of submarine’s presence at 
fashionable resort.—Features of the Lake .—Tests provide 
a continuous gala for Newport crowds. 

ix 


PAGE 


216 


228 


239 


256 






CONTENTS 


CHAPTER XXI 

The Octopus goes under water for twenty-four hours to 
meet navy requirements.—Crew face ordeal with indiffer¬ 
ence.—All in the day’s work.—How a night and day were 
spent under Narragansett Bay.—Monotony of life below 
the waves, shut from the world, more felt than fear of 
drowning.—Jules Verne overcolored the attractiveness of 
undersea existence.—Naval Board approves the Octopus 
as the best submarine so far built.—More boats for navy. 
—Gasoline engines displaced by the Diesel heavy-oil type. 

^ CHAPTER XXII 

The third American submarine flotilla, typified by the 
Salmon. —Achievements of 1910.—Germany’s develop¬ 
ments from the Holland type.—Submarine strength in the 
World War.—Growth of Holland boats from the 1895 
boat to the Schley. —Inventor’s withdrawal from the in¬ 
dustry he created.—Denounced submarines developed by 
his successors as unseaworthy death traps.—Expansion of 
his invention beyond his scope. and control.—Declining 
years occupied in devising a flying machine.—His death 
just before the World War’s outbreak.—German subma¬ 
rines evolved from the Holland type realize his early aims 
in seeking to weaken British naval power. 

CHAPTER XXIII 

Future expansion in size, power, and gunnery.—The 
pace Germany set.—The Diesel electric drive.—Great 
Britain’s and Japan’s big submersibles.—The American V 
class.—Progress halted by lack of money.—The Flamm 
7,000-ton submarine.—The submersible battleship.—United 
States’ naval foresight produces plan for one of 20,000 
tons.—Italy also looking ahead with similar plans. 

CHAPTER XXIV 

The submarine situation wide open.—All countries free 
to build them.—The case for smaller nations.—Submarine 
strength of leading navies.—Conflict over allotting ton¬ 
nage proportionate to capital ships.—France’s objections to 
being rated below the United States and Great Britain.— 
—British action if France builds big submarine fleet.—A 
race for supremacy inevitable.—Outlook for another con¬ 
ference curbing increase of under-water craft.—Probable 
reaction on American naval policy.—Scheme for ade¬ 
quately guarding our coasts by submarine fleets at tem¬ 
porary bases.—Fixed defenses ineffective without sub¬ 
mersibles.—Need of hundreds of such boats.—Economy of 
submarine defense.—Popular indifference to naval needs... 
Supplementary Chapter by Rear-Admiral W. W. 

Kimball, Retired .. 


PAGE 


266 


281 


292 


299 

314 


x 





ILLUSTRATIONS 


Frank T. Cable./. Frontispiece 

John P. Holland. Facing p. 1 

Plan of Submarine Boat Designed by John P. 

Holland and Built at Delamater Iron Works, 1880 “ 70 

Design of the Smallest Submarine Ever Put in 
Actual Service. “ 96 

Submarine “Plunger” Alongside Dock. Baltimore, 

1895 . “ 100 

Sketch of Armored Submarine Torpedo Boat 
Designed by John P. Holland, 1894. “ 104 

Sections Showing General Arrangement Plan of 
Original Holland Submarine. “ 110 

Submarine “Holland” Alongside Dock. “ 120 

“A”'Class Submarine on Railway. “ 172 

Launching of Submarine “Tarpon”. “ 172 

Russian Submarine Taken in the Gulf of Finland, 

1904 . “ 218 

Loading “Fulton” on Tramp Steamer for Ship¬ 
ment to Russia, 1904 . “ 218 

Launching Submarine in Russia, 1904. “ 222 

Interior of Submarine, Looking Forward. “ 232 

Submarine Running Full Speed Submerged. “ 232 

Stern of Submarine Showing Diving Rudder 
Under Surface . “ 268 

Morning Bath on Submarine. “ 278 

Submarines in Wet Dock, Fore River, 1914. “ 294 

Boat Designed and built by John P. Holland in 
1877 and Experimented With in the Passaic 
River. “ 304 

Sketch Showing Progress Made in the Design 
and Construction of Submarines from 1895 to 
1919. “ 304 

xi 


/ 


























4 











\ 











Publishers’ Foreword 


This timely book is published to meet the demand in 
all the countries of the world for accurate information 
regarding the future of the submarine —and its direct 
effect upon the future of war and world peace. 

What is the submarine? Is it a “sea devil” that 
threatens the existence of nations ? Or is it a little God¬ 
send in disguise that will drive age-long war from the 
seven seas, make great naval battles impossible, and 
ultimately force the era of world peace which all human¬ 
ity seeks? 

These are some of the questions that disturbed the 
Washington Conference and that create discussion in 
the inner circles of the League of Nations. What shall 
we do with the submarines ? Shall we chain them to our 
ports like watch-dogs of defence to protect us from 
invasion ? Have the great navies seen their last days ? 

While volumes have been published on various phases 
of this subject, this is the first book to go down into 
the depths of the situation and reveal the true story of 
this most ingenious invention of mankind. 

The publishers, in seeking sources for the facts 
herein presented, have made a real discovery. We have 
found an old submarine “sea dog” who knows the whole 
inside story of this modern miracle, who joined the first 
crew twenty-five years ago. 

Capt. Frank T. Cable is one of the few living experts 
on the naval submarine. He lives in the old shipping 
port of New London, Connecticut, where almost since 
xiii 


PUBLISHERS’ FOREWORD 

the founding of America, “men have been going down 
to the sea in ships.” 

Captain Cable is the electrical engineer who helped to 
develop the original Holland submarine, commanded 
her on every trip until she was sold to the United States 
government twenty-four years ago. He superintended 
the completion, conducted trials and trained the crews 
for the first submarines built by the English, Russian 
and Japanese governments. He has spent nearly thirty 
years in the development, construction, and operation 
of these undersea craft, and in connection with this work 
has visited every country in the world that has adopted 
submarines. 

This volume, therefore, is in the nature of an official 
document that will prove a revelation to those who other¬ 
wise would never know the inside facts regarding one 
of the momentous problems among the nations today. 


XIV 


The Captain's Log 

My intent in setting down these calculations 
on my first journey underseas is not so much 
to develop a narrative of adventure, as it is to 
clear up the mystery that engulfs one of the 
greatest human achievements and to give his¬ 
torical credit to the genius who gave his life to 
its accomplishment. 

The submarine is an American invention — 
it is the genius of an ardent Irish-American 
patriot. It belongs to America—with the tele¬ 
phone, the telegraph, the steamship, the air¬ 
plane, electricity, and the other wonders of the 
modern world that have marked the beginning 
of new epochs. 

As Kipling said, “I learned about women 
from ’er,” in speaking of his little Bengalese, 
so the Germans must admit in their own con¬ 
sciences, “What I know about submarines I 
learned from him ,, —speaking of my Irish- 
American comrade, friend, and fellow-worker, 
John P. Holland . 

Perhaps I am sailing into dangerous waters 
with this volume—there may be sunken mines 
ahead—but I have seen many a hazardous 
voyage, and whatever the odds may be, I have 


XV 


THE CAPTAIN’S LOG 

but one port ahead, and that is to take John 
Holland to his final resting place in the pages 
of history. I do not intend to see him robbed of 
the honors that are due him, or to see him 
suffer for the misdeeds and diabolical devices 
of others who may have “misappropriated his 
brains” and used them against the laws of hon- 
orability in war—even though it be granted 
that “all is fair in love and war.” 

The facts that I am to relate are taken from 
private diaries, records, personal experiences, 
conversations and confidences, covering twenty- 
five years, supplemented by extensive research 
and investigations of The Search-Light Organ¬ 
ization, New York. I know what John Hol¬ 
land intended to do when he gave his life to the 
development of the submarine. I know the 
services he intended to render to his country 
and to the world. And I know that the impel¬ 
ling motive behind him was his almost fanatical 
belief that the submarine would make naval 
wars impossible, and that this eventually would 
lead to disarmament on both sea and land, until 
war is abolished from the human race. 

My duty requires me to deal with motives 
as well as men and mechanics; with govern¬ 
ments and statecraft as well as invention. It 
leads into the world’s capitals as well as its 

xvi 


THE CAPTAIN'S LOG 

ports, and, paradox that it may seem, the great¬ 
est battles of the submarines have so far been 
fought in the closeted committees of legislative 
bodies, congresses, and parliaments. While I 
am neither a trained writer nor an historian, I 
trust this volume may to some degree perform 
its mission. 

F, T. C. 


xvii 




THE 

BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 
OF THE 

AMERICAN 

SUBMARINE 


XIX 
























































JOHN P. HOLLAND 


|||gp8| 





CHAPTER I 


The submarine’s mission.—Development synchro¬ 
nized with growth of war symptoms.—British objections 
to its continued use.—American attitude on humane 
warfare. — Disarmament Conference’s conclusions. — 
Upheld as a legitimate war weapon.—Sims’s defense of 
its operations.—Submarine restraints on naval strategy. 

—Not yet tested as a fighting force against war ves¬ 
sels.—Its toll of British naval craft linked with 
Holland’s original purposes in studying undersea navi¬ 
gation. 

The evolution of the modern submarine 
from the crude devices of its infancy received 
its main impetus from the brain of an Irish- 
American, John Philip Holland, in the ’seven¬ 
ties of the nineteenth century. Hence its vicis¬ 
situdes toward the goal of practicality are 
largely interwoven with the adventurous youth 
of the world-famed type of boat identified with 
that inventor’s name, and with which this nar¬ 
rative mainly deals. 

The subject extends far beyond the begin¬ 
nings of the Holland craft, because from that 
type Germany evolved her ravaging U-boats, 
and in her methods of using them covered the 
new weapon with infamy. The subject inevi¬ 
tably extends to the submarine’s ends. What 
are they? As the Disarmament Conference at 
Washington disclosed, the use of undersea craft 


2 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

as war weapons became an undetermined dis¬ 
pute between Great Britain and the other lead¬ 
ing powers (including the United States), who 
shared in that conclave. 

The World War showed what the submarine 
could do. Its performances were also inter¬ 
preted as revealing what it could not do. Of 
more moment to the world than either was the 
agreement of the Conference regarding what 
it should not do, for upon a moral and humane 
restriction of its activities rests the survival of 
the submarine as a useful naval arm. 

Coming into its own in the World War, the 
submarine more than realized the claims Hol¬ 
land made for his great contribution to its 
development. The war provided an intensely 
dramatic justification of his wildest dreams. 
Their realization was startling and‘horrifying 
enough, and took a direction neither he nor 
other submarine pioneers intended. Germany 
misused the new weapon, but the crime was not 
the submarine’s. Nevertheless, both the sub¬ 
marine’s appearance and Germany’s misbehav¬ 
ior were inevitable. By 1914 undersea navi¬ 
gation had fully emerged from its long ado¬ 
lescence and was ready for the supreme test. 
Germany, whose morality or mentality, as Ad¬ 
miral Sims put it, dictated the character of the 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 3 

war, on sea no less than on land, could not act 
other than she did. Perhaps an ironical direc¬ 
tion of fate can be discerned in the fact that the 
war, which cast its shadow over Europe long 
before it came, did not break before the sub¬ 
marine was ready. As the war symptoms 
became more and more acute, the submarine 
advanced in efficiency. It moved toward ma¬ 
turity synchronously with the swelling of the 
undercurrents of national antagonisms that 
caused the conflict. The war could almost be 
said to have waited until the submarine spoke 
the word. 

Germany pounced on the new arm to rescue 
her sea campaign from being wholly sterile, 
with the result that undersea craft came under 
drastic indictment at the Washington Confer¬ 
ence. Great Britain, through her chief spokes¬ 
men, Lords Balfour and Lee, sought to extir¬ 
pate the new weapon root and branch. They 
charged that it had accomplished little in legiti¬ 
mate warfare. Germany, with a fleet of 375 
boats, aggregating 270,000 tons—the figures 
are Lord Lee’s—had shown that its main use 
lay in the destruction of commerce. The most 
ardent of submarine advocates will concede 
the substantial grounds Great Britain had for 
regarding the submarine solely as a merciless 


4 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

pirate in view of the wholesale holocausts her 
merchant fleets suffered at Germany's hands. 
The British were naturally blinded by their 
maritime losses; also, they did not want their 
great naval squadrons to be at the mercy of 
other nations' submarines. Not content with 
even a limitation of modern craft, they were 
ready to scrap their own efficient submarine 
fleet of 82,000 tons, despite the possession of 
long coast lines needing protection, if other 
powers would do the like. With limitation a 
submarine fleet could be rapidly augmented in 
time of war. They rightly held that sub¬ 
marines could only be built if the industry 
were kept alive, and an adequate personnel 
could only be provided if a trained nucleus 
already existed. Hence the menace of sub¬ 
marines could only be removed by their com¬ 
plete abolition. 

The British case is worth stating, not alone 
on humanitarian grounds, but for the rebuttals 
it evoked. The United States, France, Japan, 
and Italy alike defended the continued use of 
submarines, especially for coast defense. 
American feeling was voiced by the Advisory 
Committee which aided the United States 
delegation. This committee, headed by an 
admiral and composed of representative men 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 5 

and women from all fields of activity and all 
parts of the country, reflected every shade of 
public sentiment. Though Secretary Hughes 
told the Conference that their conclusions 
were not submitted as expressing the opinions 
of the government, there can be little doubt 
that the administration was in accord with 
them. It had this to say regarding brutal 
methods: 

“The United States would never desire its 
navy to undertake unlimited submarine war¬ 
fare. In fact, the spirit of fair play of the 
people would bring about the downfall of the 
administration which attempted to sanction its 
use. . . . The committee is therefore of the 
opinion that unlimited warfare by submarines 
on commerce should be outlawed. The right 
of visit and search must be exercised by sub¬ 
marines under the same rules as for surface 
vessels. ,, 

After the Conference had threshed out the 
subject, Admiral Wemyss, for Great Britain, 
further challenged the utility of submarines as 
commerce destroyers in the Nineteenth Cen¬ 
tury in discussing the effects of the naval 
limitation treaty. He submitted that their 
lack of means for providing for the safety of 
the crews of the vessels seized was in itself 


6 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

sufficient to make them useless for this purpose 
unless the illegal and inhuman practice of 
sinking without warning was resorted to. His 
conclusion was that as a commerce destroyer 
the submarine was, "if legitimately used, prac¬ 
tically useless.” 

Admiral Wemyss here echoed the feeling of 
the Conference that conditions of submarine 
warfare made impossible the observance of 
humane laws. But his flat statement that sub¬ 
marines were useless as legitimate commerce 
destroyers found a challenger in Admiral 
Sims. This sturdy American champion of 
efficient and legitimate navalism dedared that 
the evidence to the contrary was overwhelm¬ 
ing. 

"The success of the German submarines in 
attacking allied merchant shipping, and the 
subsequent success of the allied navies in pro¬ 
tecting this shipping in convoys,” he said in 
“Current History,” "were both due to the 
simple fact that the geographical situation was 
such that the bulk of the shipping had to con¬ 
verge to pass through the English Channel or 
the Irish Sea; the submarine (except a few 
cruising subs) could not operate more than 
about three hundred miles to the westward of 
these channels, because further out the dis- 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 7 

persion of the shipping would have been so 
wide that they could have sighted but few 
vessels. This inevitable restriction of the 
submarine’s operations within this limited 
area made it possible for the destroyer forces, 
based on Queenstown, Brest, and the western 
Channel ports, to protect the convoys in their 
passage through this area—the so-called sub¬ 
marine danger zone. That is, the destroyers 
were able to do this because the distances they 
were required to steam from their bases of 
supply were not beyond their radii of action at 
the speed required for this service. Mani¬ 
festly, such service could not be performed 
outside the radius of action of the escorting 
vessels. 

“This is one of the reasons for the inhumane 
method of submarine warfare as practiced by 
the*Germans. In waters close to their bases, 
the smaller, short-radius submarines could 
also operate, but the attacked craft could gen¬ 
erally summon aid if warned. This meant that 
the torpedo was generally relied upon under 
these conditions. 

“The other reason was, of course, that the 
Germans believed in and practiced terrorism 
as a part of their war philosophy. In Belgium 
the results were rather satisfactory: German 


8 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

communications were rendered secure with a 
minimum of troops. This fact does not con¬ 
done the practice of terrorism, but it does indi¬ 
cate that inhuman methods were not so much 
a necessary part of submarine war as of Ger¬ 
man war methods. For example: there is no 
inherent quality in the submarine that makes 
the gunning of survivors in lifeboats—an un¬ 
proved charge, by the way—necessary and the 
employment of submarines did not force the 
Germans to sink hospital ships.” 

Out in the open sea, beyond the immediate 
danger of meeting anti-submarine craft, 
German methods were different. There they 
employed cruising types of submarines, and 
the freer surroundings enabled more humane 
conditions to be observed. The larger tonnage, 
wider range, greater speed and gun power of 
the German cruising submarines admitted of 
different tactics from those followed nearer 
the destroyer-infected British and French 
coast waters. Thereon Admiral Sims re¬ 
marked : 

“To sink by torpedo, without warning, was 
unnecessary, costly, and inefficient. Only a 
limited number of torpedoes could be carried. 
To capture by threat of gun fire and to board 
and use a bomb were not only more effective, 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 9 

but more economical. On the other hand, to 
capture conferred other advantages. Stores 
could be taken, the captured ship could be used 
as a base, and part of the crew rested and 
become refreshed as a prize crew, and when 
the passengers and crews of other ships that 
had been sunk filled the prize she could be 
freed to proceed to port. This was actually 
done. The U -140 carried a special prize crew. 
The U -156 captured the Canadian trawler 
Triumph, armed her and used her as a raider. 
The same submarine captured the schooner 
Willie G. and set her free with the crew of the 
British steamer Eric, who had been prisoners 
on the U-boat. 

“In short, the modern cruising submarine, 
because of its size, radius, speed, and arma¬ 
ment, is a more efficient cruiser than any sur¬ 
face type possibly can be, because it can keep 
the sea longer and can conceal itself at will. 
If it resorts to inhuman methods, it is not 
because its limitations force it to do so, but 
because it prefers such methods.” 

The cruising submarine, Admiral Sims con¬ 
cluded, could be used continuously and effec¬ 
tively against an enemy’s commerce and 
With few exceptions, the German cruising 
without any violation of international law. 


10 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

submarines were so used during the war. 
However, their employment was not extensive 
—the type, in fact, did not appear till the war’s 
final stages. Their more humane operations, 
accordingly, were far outweighed by the 
depredations of the smaller types, which held 
the field for most of the war period. The five 
powers which considered the subject at the 
Conference were aware only of the latter’s 
behavior and condemned it. They adopted the 
Root resolution, which went farther than pre¬ 
scribing laws governing the seizure and sink¬ 
ing of merchant vessels by submarines and 
safeguarding the lives of neutrals and non- 
combatants. While naming these laws, the 
resolution vitiated them in declaring that 
submarines could not be used as commerce 
destroyers without violations. Hence in agree¬ 
ing on the laws to be respected, the five powers 
despaired of their observance. So the resolu¬ 
tion’s real purpose, affirmed by these powers 
at the Conference, aimed at prohibiting sub¬ 
marines making war on helpless commercial 
vessels altogether. Therein lay a signal victory 
for Great Britain. Short of encompassing the 
abolition of submarines, she was well content, 
with the other powers, to have their operation 
restricted to war vessels. 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 11 

Here we enter on the real field of the sub¬ 
marine—the objective of Holland and other 
inventors. Great Britain's case for complete 
abolition necessarily embraced a denunciation 
of the submarine's value as a legitimate war 
weapon, but here the British stand, especially 
as stated by Lord Balfour, was at its weakest. 
The submarine, both he and Lord Lee insisted, 
was not even an arm of the weak; it failed in 
coast defense, a contention that lacked convic¬ 
tion in view of Great Britain's own earlier 
policy in adopting submarines primarily for 
that duty. The British were not on much 
more solid ground in maintaining that the 
submarine's value had already been reduced by 
the employment of swift vessels, powerfully 
armed and equipped, to resist underwater 
attacks, and of new methods of detecting the 
submarine's presence and forestalling its of¬ 
fensive power. Much has been done in this 
direction, but it is not true that means of 
destroying the submarine exceed its strength 
as a war weapon. As methods of its operation 
develop, so will its power of attack increase. 

Searching for more ammunition with which 
to riddle the case of the submarine, the British 
spokesman hit upon one statement advanced 
that the submarine was cheap and therefore 


12 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

serviceable for poor nations. Lord Lee hoped 
—as we all do—that the Powers did not want 
to make war cheap; when war was cheap it 
had been almost continuous. He objected to 
the submarine being defended because it was 
deemed to be a weapon within the reach of all 
countries. It was a good point to make; but 
submarines are not cheap to those nations who 
need them most—those with long coast lines. 
The submarine of to-day is no longer lilliputian 
and inexpensive to build. It has great cruising 
and armament power, a rising tonnage, and 
endless potentialities for an expansion in bulk 
and equipment that will rank it with costly 
surface vessels of considerable displacement. 

The submarine’s service in war was con¬ 
vincingly stated by the American Advisory 
Committee: 

“Against enemy men-of-war, the submarine 
may be likened to the advance guard on land 
which hides in a tree or uses underbrush to 
conceal itself. If the infantry in its advances 
encounters an ambuscade, it suffers greatly 
even if it is not totally annihilated.” 

“However, an ambuscade is entirely legiti¬ 
mate. 

“In the same fashion, a submarine strikes 
the advancing enemy from concealment, and 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 13 

no nation cries out against the form of attack 
as illegal. Its navy simply becomes more 
vigilant, moves faster, and uses its surface 
scouts to protect itself. . . . The best defense 
against them is eternal vigilance and high 
speed. . . . 

“The submarine as a man-o’-war has a very 
vital part to play. It has come to stay. It 
may strike without warning against combatant 
vessels, as surface vessels may do also, but it 
must be required to observe the prescribed 
rules of surface craft when opposing mer¬ 
chantmen at other times. 

“As a scout the submarine has great possi¬ 
bilities. It is the one type of vessel able to 
proceed unsupported into distant enemy 
waters and maintain itself to observe and 
report enemy movements. It has great value, 
a legitimate use, and no nation can decry its 
employment. . . . 

“. . . Submarines acting legitimately from 
bases in our distant possessions would harass 
and greatly disturb an enemy attempting 
operations against them. They might even 
delay the fall of these possessions until our fleet 
could assemble and commence major opera¬ 
tions. 

“It will be impossible for our fleet to protect 


14 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 
our two long coast lines properly at all times, 
submarines located at bases along both coasts 
will be useful as scouts and to attack any 
enemy who should desire to make raids on 
exposed positions. 

‘The submarine is particularly an instru¬ 
ment of weak naval powers. The business of 
the world is carried on upon the surface of the 
sea. Any navy which is dominant on the sur¬ 
face prefers to rely on that superiority, while 
navies comparatively weak may but threaten 
that dominance by developing a new form of 
attack to attain success through surprise. 
Hence submarines have offered and secured 
advantages until the method of successful 
counter-attack has been developed. 

“The United States navy lacks a proper 
number of cruisers. The few we have would 
be unable to cover the necessary area to obtain 
information. Submarines could greatly assist 
them, as they cannot be driven in by enemy 
scouts. 

“The retention of a large submarine force 
may at some future time result in the United 
States holding its outlying possessions. If 
these colonies once fall, the expenditure of 
men necessary to recapture them will be tre¬ 
mendous and may result in a drawn war which 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 15 

would really be a United States defeat. The 
United States needs a large submarine force 
to protect its interests.” 

Lord Balfour’s case against the submarine’s 
war value savored of the contentions of an 
advocate speaking solely by his brief. Even 
British naval opinion did not support him. 
Where, asked Admiral Wemyss, was his 
authority for stating that only as a commerce 
destroyer had the submarine been successful? 

“The claim,” said this British naval officer, 
“that the efficacy of these vessels is based on 
their successes obtained in commerce destroy¬ 
ing is incorrect, for their successes in that line 
were solely due to the illegality of the way in 
which they were used. To presume that this in 
future will be the sole method of their employ¬ 
ment is to attribute to those who believe in 
submarines a mentality for which there is not 
the slightest justification. 

“When the war broke out the submarine 
was an untried weapon. That the Germans at 
first hoped by its means materially to reduce 
the superiority of the Grand Fleet is known; 
that they failed in their object was less due to 
the inefficiency of the weapon than their want 
of experience in its use. To deduce from this 
that it has no offensive value is to ignore the 


16 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 
deeds of our own submarines in the Baltic and 
in the Sea of Marmora. 

“Who, with the lessons of the Dardanelles 
campaign before him, can say that they are 
useless as a weapon of defense? Had any 
been present off Gallipoli in April, 1915, the 
landing of the troops on the peninsula would 
have been impossible; never could the trans¬ 
ports and supply ships have lain quietly off 
those beaches, pouring forth men and muni¬ 
tions as they did, had they been open to sub¬ 
marine attack. As it was, when they did, later 
on, make their appearance, they sank two 
battleships and drove the transports into the 
security of Mudros Harbor, thus increasing 
enormously the labor and difficulty of keeping 
the army supplied. 

“Submarines have rendered a close blockade 
impossible, and the duties they carried out in 
the North Sea, watching the enemy coasts, 
have proved them to be a most valuable adjunct 
to the main fleet.” 

It is pertinent to point out, however, as 
Admiral Sims has done, that in the World 
War the submarine never really received its 
baptism of fire as a fighting vessel—that is, 
matched against other war vessels. No or¬ 
ganized and concerted submarine attack was 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 17 

ever tried. The submarine's main strength 
was concentrated against merchant shipping. 
Its sinkings of naval craft were incidental, but, 
though small, were hardly negligible. That 
German craft rarely attacked allied men-of- 
war could not be construed as showing the 
failure of submarines as weapons of legitimate 
war. The cause of German abstention was 
well stated by Admiral Sims: 

“Assuming the decision of the German 
Admiralty to violate the laws of humanity and 
international law, their submarine campaign 
was strategically sound. A determined sub¬ 
marine attack upon the vessels of the Allies 
would doubtless have been reasonably success¬ 
ful, but the loss of submarines would have 
been considerable, and it would have been risk¬ 
ing a great deal to have assumed that the sub¬ 
marines could have sufficiently weakened the 
Grand Fleet before too many of their number 
had been destroyed. Therefore the German 
naval authorities acted upon the much safer, 
and I believe sounder, decision to avoid a costly 
‘frontal’ attack in favor of an attack upon the 
Allies’ wholly essential sea lines of communi¬ 
cation, that is, the merchant shipping—a most 
inviting objective, considering the fact that 
this shipping was very inadequately protected 


18 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

at the time the intensive submarine campaign 
was decided upon. 

“However, as it is a fact that the submarines 
systematically avoided action with men-of- 
war, except in the few cases where they be¬ 
lieved they were sure of a killing, it is appa¬ 
rent that the record the submarines made in 
such attacks against men-of-war does not 
justify the conclusion that these results are a 
measure of what submarines are capable of do¬ 
ing in organized attacks against naval forces.” 

Just what, then, did the submarines do 
against fighting vessels? Their outstanding 
achievement was the part they played as a 
deterrent to the free movements of surface 
war craft. If they did not wholly keep the 
Grand Fleet at bay, they at least dictated its 
tactics. The fleet's safety was only assured 
by its heavy screen of cruisers and destroyers, 
and by zigzagging at high speed, but its chief 
safety lay in its nearness to supply bases. Such 
protective formation and methods of naviga¬ 
tion could not have guarded the fleet for long^ 
against submarines if it operated far from its 
bases, say, 2,000 or 3,000 miles distant, for 
the vessels could not steam and zigzag far at 
high speed, and their destroyer escort had a 
still more limited radius of action. 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 19 

Fighting ships need to be within proximity 
of their bases to foil submarine attacks, and 
their success even then is not assured. A 
British fleet, say in American waters, with all 
its power based on its home ports, could not 
effectively blockade New York harbor, the 
Delaware, and the Chesapeake in face of the 
presence at these ports of adequate submarines; 
it would equally fail to maintain itself before 
a South American or any other distant port. 

Able to go where they pleased, the subma¬ 
rines during the war, except in waters closely 
guarded, limited the radius of action of a 
fleet. They barred surface vessels from re¬ 
maining in any area where the water was deep 
enough for submerged operations. As check¬ 
mates to a close blockade, as coast vigilantes, 
the submarines reached a high mark of effect¬ 
iveness, as Admiral Wemyss noted. Blockad¬ 
ing Heligoland Bight at close range caused 
the torpedoing by submarines of so many men- 
of-war that the Allied effort was abandoned. 
The region could only be blockaded at long 
range, and then not wholly, by surface vessels 
guarding the north and south entrances of the 
North Sea far enough away from German sub¬ 
marine bases to make the blockaders relatively 
safe from attack. It was not the mine fields 


20 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

that kept the Allied war craft a respectful 
distance from the German coast Admiral de 
Bon, speaking for France, told the conference 
that if Germany had maintained her coast in¬ 
tact, it was not solely because of her barrier 
of mines. This protection could have been 
overcome by any naval force provided with 
mine sweepers, had not watchful submarines, 
supplementing the mine defenses, rendered ap¬ 
proach to them dangerous. 

Submarines likewise achieved what Holland 
himself had declared was impossible, but then, 
as the narrative to be unfolded will show, they 
developed far beyond his early conceptions. 
They fought submarines. It was here that 
Allied undersea craft played a distinctive part. 
Admiral Sims in his Victory at Sea noted that 
in proportion to the number of the various 
types of anti-submarine craft employed, the 
Allied submarines destroyed three times as 
many German submarines as the Allied de¬ 
stroyers, and twenty times as many as the 
auxiliary patrol craft. 

The destructive record of both Teutonic and 
Allied submarines against naval vessels has 
been roughly calculated at 131 vessels, which 
embraced battleships, battle cruisers, cruisers, 
gunboats, destroyers, submarines (30), auxil- 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 21 

iaries, and other craft. Great Britain, of 
course, bore the greatest loss, namely, 60 ves¬ 
sels ; France came next with 23. Germany lost 
13 naval craft, in addition to 20 submarines, 
through Allied undersea operations; Austria 
lost 10; Turkey 8. The American loss by sub¬ 
marines was small—one destroyer and two 
auxiliaries. As a “side line ,, of the subma¬ 
rine’s performances in the war, its naval 
record disposed of the contention that it was 
weak as a legitimate fighting weapon. 

British naval losses from undersea warfare 
are especially of note in relation to the subject 
of this narrative, for they form an historic 
link with the beginnings of the modern subma¬ 
rine and the purpose which inspired Holland’s 
invention. The war, moreover, produced an 
episode that had a closer connection. This was 
the visit to the Irish shore in 1916 of a German 
U-Boat bearing Sir Roger Casement on his 
mission to perform his part in wresting Ire¬ 
land from British rule. The event had a sig¬ 
nificance which war commentators did not per¬ 
ceive. It had a direct bearing—somewhat re¬ 
mote in time, it is true, forming as it did a gap 
of fifty or more years—upon the ambition 
which animated Holland as an Irish youth in 
turning his thoughts to underwater navigation. 


22 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 
Had he been living to witness the appearance 
of that U-Boat off the coast of Ireland, he 
would have recognized it as more than a sym¬ 
bol of the fruition of the dream which eventu¬ 
ally was to take material shape in American 
shipyards. 


CHAPTER II 


Holland as an Irish teacher—Birth of his submarine 
device.—His calling and hobby in conflict.—Crude de¬ 
vices of the past as a guide.—The Merrimac’s exploits 
in the Civil War against wooden ships and her fight 
with the Monitor stimulate his submarine studies.— 
Ironclad fleets foreseen as a result.—Strengthening of 
British naval supremacy by this development.—Conse¬ 
quent need of undersea weapons to curb the power of 
dreadnaughts.—Holland’s hostility to England a di¬ 
recting influence in formulating submarine devices.— 
Aimed to weaken British sea power. 

The father of the modern submarine sprang 
from the Irish peasantry, a stock which has 
produced many noteworthy men of the Emer¬ 
ald Isle. His early days were passed in the 
obscure little town of Liscannor, in County 
Clare on Munster’s western shores, where he 
was born on February 24, 1842. If early as¬ 
sociations mold a man’s mind, Holland had an 
element at his very door that must have exer¬ 
cised a formative influence upon his boyhood. 
It was the sea, and, with the sea, ships. He was 
born in sight of a shipyard on Liscannor Bay, 
and the Atlantic roared beyond. At the early 
age of six he had mapped his future. 

Liscannor was as good a breeding place for 
ideas as anywhere else. Genius bloweth where 
it listeth, and nature does not select prepared 


24 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 
locations for its nourishment. The town was 
no more than a village on a bay; even to-day it 
numbers only a few hundred inhabitants. 
Greater and lesser men than Holland have had 
beginnings as remote and, on the surface, as 
unpromising. His early boyhood was merged 
with his surroundings; he was lost in them, un- 
distinguishable from the youth he mingled 
with. 

What primary education he received was 
imparted by the Christian Brothers at a school 
in Limerick, where the river Shannon flows, 
some forty miles to the southeast across his 
native county. There, at the age of fourteen, 
he showed the first symptoms of his native 
bent. He passed an examination in naviga¬ 
tion. His inclinations had definitely turned to 
the sea, and he looked toward seamanship, or 
work in a shipyard, as his ultimate lot. But a 
physical disability intervened. He was near¬ 
sighted. His vision was so defective that, as 
he said in later days, “no one would trust me 
even to row a two-oared boat, much less to 
navigate a ship.” The shipping industry had 
no more use for near-sighted mechanics than 
it had for sailormen who could not see straight. 
He was compelled to remain at school, but not 
as a pupil. The first Holland submarine was 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 25 

conceived in a school by a mind that knew very 
little about it. 

At the beginning of the century a noted 
German naval expert, Carl Bushey, complained 
before a meeting of the German Society of 
Naval Architects and Naval Engineers that of 
all branches of ship construction, the ignorant 
had devoted the most of their energy to the 
designing of submarine boats. Researches in 
the German naval archives from the year 1861 
showed no less than 181 different plans whose 
designers were in all branches of business ex¬ 
cept that of ship construction. They included 
ministers, teachers, students, bank clerks, and 
other people in the peaceful walks of life, in¬ 
cluding simple mechanics. This was equally 
true of other countries. Interest in undersea 
navigation was almost wholly confined to 
landsmen. Shipbuilders and designers paid 
little attention to the subject. 

Holland was a landsman and a teacher. His 
defective eyesight seemed to have determined 
his calling. He would have been the first to 
acknowledge that in his early days he came 
under the classification of ignoramuses who 
dabbled with ideas beyond their grasp. The 
difference between him and the other experi¬ 
menting landsmen was that his ideas eventu- 


26 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

ally came within his grasp. Years later an 
American engineer, in describing Holland's 
achievements, referred to him as a man “with 
but little education, but of bright mind." The 
latter statement presented the leading fact 
about Holland. His bright mind overshadowed 
his lack of education. 

Learning has been known to destroy bright 
minds, and Holland preserved his by discard¬ 
ing it. His genius dispensed with culture; his 
schooling came from a workshop and harbor 
waters. In fact, his occupation as a teacher— 
he taught school for twenty-one years, from 
1858 to 1879, both in Ireland and in the United 
States—was unfavorable to the development 
of his mechanical bent. The opportunity pre¬ 
sented itself for a scholastic career; at least 
channels were open to him for the acquisition 
of a general culture which perhaps would have 
ranked him eventually with the learned elite. 
College degrees were ahead of him, had he 
sought them. One could readily picture him, 
with the educational background of his early 
years, as graduating toward a professorship, 
or as principal of a high school. But he passed 
by the deeper founts of book learning. His 
capacity as a teacher was based on what edu¬ 
cational facilities were immediately open to 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 27 

him, and restricted to the requirements of the 
various schools that employed him. He was 
content to impart elementary knowledge to 
elementary pupils, and as a pedagogue he did 
not advance beyond that grade. His mind had 
other things to do. This is to say that Hol¬ 
land was not a success as a teacher. 

Natural science came easy to him, as well 
as draftsmanship and mathematics, being sub¬ 
jects that appealed to his mechanical turn. As 
a teacher at the North Monastery Schools of the 
Christian Brothers in Cork, he had a directing 
influence in Brother Burke, who enjoyed a 
high repute in Ireland as being in advance of 
his time as a teacher of science. This was in 
the ’sixties of the last century, when Holland 
was in his early twenties. By the outlook his 
occupation was closing in round him, deter¬ 
mining his future. He followed it in Drogheda 
and in Dundalk. He seemed farther off than 
ever from his real field. In Dundalk he found 
himself drawn into the study of music. Con¬ 
sider the inventor of the modern submarine 
wielding a baton in directing a choir. He had 
the distinction, such as it was, of being the 
first person in Ireland to teach music accord¬ 
ing to the Sol-fa system, and the choristers he 
trained were a credit to him. Sighting blue 


28 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

water under sea through a periscope was a 
long way off. The waters round New York, 
where he was to have so many adventures with 
the primitive contraptions that paved the way 
to greater things, were no less distant. But 
his imagination, without his being consciously 
aware of its gropings, was spreading out lines 
that were later to take him where he belonged. 

His aptitude for invention at this time di¬ 
verted his mind from his irksome occupation. 
His leisure produced dreams of submarines, 
clocks, and flying machines. These mental ex¬ 
cursions into the realm of abstruse mechanics 
showed that, while looking for his path, he had 
not yet found it. In pursuing them he got far 
afield from his true metier. His first con¬ 
trivance took his mind up into the air instead 
of under the sea. It was the model of a flying 
machine; its fate, though unknown, was not in 
doubt. Oblivion took care of it. It was a 
little early for the airship, which did not rise 
full fledged till fifty years later. 

Holland, in the then immature stage of his 
inventive powers, was plainly in need of direc¬ 
tion. He could readily dabble in primitive de¬ 
vices to exerise his mechanical bent. The 
pastime was not wholly fruitless; he produced 
playthings to exercise his imagination, but, in- 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 29 

ventor-like, he took his creations seriously, and 
he was laughed at for his pains. Guidance as 
to the whence and whither of his mechanical 
studies was not available. No one was inter¬ 
ested. A man's dreams must fructify of their 
own volition, motivated by the dynamics of the 
mind that produces them, but their first need 
is external stimulus. Holland found no in¬ 
centive at hand. Moreover, the adventures of 
submarine inventors in the past had been dis¬ 
mal failures when they were not tragic. 

Despite this outlook, he cast about for guid¬ 
ing principles upon which to formulate an 
undersea craft applicable to modern sea con¬ 
ditions. An extensive field was presented. 
Man's rude efforts to hold his own beneath the 
waves by devising all manner of strange de¬ 
vices reached back far into the mists of history. 

The primary idea that animated early in¬ 
ventors was to remain under water and breathe 
as freely as if above the water. The germ of 
a submarine was evolved when they succeeded 
in devising a vessel containing air and large 
enough to hold a diver. The beginnings of the 
modern undersea craft became the more pro¬ 
nounced by the provision of means of propul¬ 
sion, however crude. The devices took many 
forms, among them diving bells, cylinders, 


30 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 
leather boats, air-tight boxes, arks, hogsheads, 
barrels with pointed cones, and one had a metal 
hull, spindle shaped, to allow of progress in 
either direction. 

The first advance from the early diving ap¬ 
paratus (Aristotle mentions diving bells used 
in a siege of Troy, 332 b. c.) was the water¬ 
tight glass barrel, raised and lowered by 
chains, in which Alexander the Great is said 
to have descended to the sea bed and there sat 
comfortably defying a whale. The story, if 
not true, was at least instructive. The idea 
produced, in 1400, a design of a boat in the 
form of a cylinder with a pointed prow and 
stern, both detachable. It was intended to 
cross rivers without being seen by an enemy. 
Leonardo da Vinci about 1490, among his 
other ingenuities, evolved an undersea device 
shaped as a rigid tube, and in 1538 a notable 
diving bell was tried out in Toledo, Spain. 

These instances belong to the records and 
nowhere else. Among such crudities of the 
past, however, were two contrivances that 
may well have served as guideposts for Hol¬ 
land’s more immediate predecessors. One was 
credited to the Scandinavian pirates who 
infested Greenland in the sixteenth century. 
They used leather boats, which they navigated, 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 31 

“not so much above as under the water,” as 
the records went, and crept in ambush under 
merchant ships and bored holes in the hull 
below the pumps. The idea is not far removed 
from Bushnell’s device for attaching a torpedo 
under a vessel by means of a screw. The 
other development was a submersible invented 
by a Dutchman, Cornelius van Drebbel, in 
1620. His boat, of which he made several, 
was made water-tight by oiled leather stretched 
over the outside wood. It registered a marked 
advance in providing for revitalizing the air 
in the boat, so as to “make it again, for a good 
while, fit for respiration.” The inventor died 
without disclosing his method of air cleansing; 
it was supposed he had some recipe for releas¬ 
ing oxygen from water. Evidently the boat 
was of some account, as King James I of 
England safely ventured on a trip in it. Navi¬ 
gated by a dozen oars, it made journeys lasting 
several hours, below the surface. 

Holland did not delve very deeply into sub¬ 
marine bibliography, which was at best a little 
hazy in information to a parched mind, but the 
van Drebbel device, such as it was, was one of 
the few that caught his attention. He looked 
nearer to his own day for the guidance he 
needed, and events far off—in the United 


32 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

States—finally directed his mind and gave it 
the needed momentum. He found a mentor in 
the naval operations of the Civil War. 

That conflict had opened a new era in sea 
warfare. It sealed the fate of wooden ships as 
combatants. It evolved the ironclad, and in 
the Confederate “Davids”—a name given to 
submerged craft which attacked the Union 
fleet—furnished a forerunner to the modern 
submarine which Holland was to perfect. 
Because of its directional influence on Hol¬ 
land’s mind, the fight between the Merrimac 
and the Monitor will bear allusion in connec¬ 
tion with his gropings as an inventor. This 
battle, the first between two ironclads, though 
they were not the first of their kind, was 
epochal, and showed that two iron-wrought 
vessels could pound each other without vital 
hurt with the gun power of those days. It 
showed that the future warship was the iron¬ 
clad, which was to develop into the heavily 
armored super-dreadnaught of our own day 
with its enormous gun power. It forecast the 
supremacy of impregnable fighting leviathans 
before whom lesser foes must yield or be sunk 
unless some new destructive device could be 
invented to cripple their power. 

Probably it was not so much the fight of the 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 33 

ironclads by itself that impressed Holland’s 
mind, as the exploits of the Merrimac before 
clashing with the Monitor. The Merrimac 
was a former Union frigate of 3,200 tons, and 
had been sunk. She was raised by the Con¬ 
federates and reconstructed of iron, with an 
armament of two 7-inch rifles, two 6-inch 
rifles, and six 9-inch smooth-bores. Mean¬ 
while the Union navy authorities rushed the 
construction of the Monitor (the first of a new 
class of ironclad naval vessels known by that 
name) in order to complete her before the 
Confederates could bring the Merrimac into 
action. The Monitor had a displacement of 
1,255 tons. The contract called for “an iron¬ 
clad, shot-proof steam-battery of iron and 
wood combined,” which meant a hull of iron 
with wooden deck beams and side projection. 
A leading feature was the adoption by its de¬ 
signer, John Ericsson, of the revolving gun 
turret devised by the American inventor 
Timby. Her armament embraced two 11-inch 
shell guns, each 15,668 pounds. 

The Union fleet was off Newport News and 
Fort Monroe at noon on March 8, 1862, when 
the Merrimac, accompanied by a couple of 
gunboats, crept out of the Elizabeth River into 
Hampton Roads. She bore down directly on 


34 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

the Congress (fifty guns) and the Cumberland 
(twenty-four guns). A heavy broadside from 
the Congress made no impression on the Mer - 
rimac, but the latter's return fire of shells 
crashed through the wooden ship's sides with 
deadly effect. The Merrimac came within 300 
yards of the Congress while receiving the fire 
of the heaviest guns of the Cumberland . The 
double assault hardly touched her. She drove 
her iron prow into the Cumberland, raked her 
with shell fire, and left her sinking. The 
Congress had run ashore. After receiving 
more of the Merrimac's destructive shells, she 
caught fire and surrendered. The Cumberland 
sank with her flag flying. Another Union 
vessel, the Minnesota engaged the Merrimac's 
attention, but had grounded where the latter 
vessel could not approach within a mile, and 
the attack was abandoned. 

The Merrimac, with her escorts, returned to 
Norfolk. She caused the Union side a loss of 
two vessels and 250 men. The Confederate 
loss was nominal. Several shore batteries had 
attempted to aid, but their shots at the Merri¬ 
mac were as ineffective as those of the Union 
guns. 

The next morning the Monitor came and 
stood alongside the stranded Minnesota. The 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 35 

Merrimac coming up, the battle followed. The 
result was counted a victory for the Monitor, 
which had rushed to the scene from her ship¬ 
yard without a previous trial trip. At any 
rate, she saved the Minnesota from the fate of 
the Congress and Cumberland, and inflicted 
more damage on the Merrimac than she her¬ 
self sustained. The Merrimac quitted a five- 
hour battle leaking, with damaged armor, 
twisted stern, the muzzles of two guns shot 
away, and a riddled funnel and steampipe. 

It will be seen which of the two engagements 
was likely to have made the greater impression 
on Holland. The clash between the Merrimac 
and Monitor differed only in degree from an 
encounter between modern battleships. The 
supremacy of the ironclad—which set Holland 
thinking—was determined by the Merrimac’s 
earlier exploits. Bearing down on the Union 
navy, she wrought terrible destruction and 
escaped scathless from the Union guns. Her 
achievement sounded the knell of wooden 
navies and told Holland that a new power had 
arisen in sea warfare, a destructive and de¬ 
fensive force which bade fair to become un¬ 
assailable to existing engines of attack. 

Holland was teaching in the North Mon¬ 
astery schools at the time. Ruefully he read 


36 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

the accounts of these sea battles in the Cork 
Examiner. He did not welcome the coming of 
the ironclad. It turned his eyes to England. 
Her navy, already supreme, he foresaw with 
an augmented strength by the transition of her 
doughty fleet from squadrons of sturdy oak 
into terrifying and irresistible monsters of 
iron hulls. It foretold a continuation of Brit¬ 
ish naval power. 

Holland's early life had been passed amid 
the miseries of the devastating famine that 
caused the great migration of those days from 
Ireland to the United States, for which British 
rule rather than nature was held responsible. 
He had imbibed a deep hostility to England; it 
was a determining factor in turning his 
thoughts to submarines. Britannia’s rule of 
the waves meant her continued rule of Ireland. 
Challenge the power of her fleet by devising a 
new weapon of destruction, and the way for 
Irish freedom was open. An earlier Irish 
American, Robert Fulton, a forerunner of 
Holland, who invented a submarine in Nelson’s 
day, was told by Lord St. Vincent, one of Eng¬ 
land’s great sea lords, that his device would be 
mainly useful to the weaker naval power; it 
promised to be of little value to the nation 
which commanded the seas. 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 37 

Armor protection for warships had engaged 
the attention of Europe before the Civil War. 
The French sent two “floating batteries” 
against the Russian fortifications in the 
Crimean War, and a set of English “floating 
batteries” were burned on the stocks by Rus¬ 
sian spies. British naval opinion at this time 
was averse to armored vessels; neither the 
Merrimac’s exploits nor the Monitor’s fight 
with her had persuaded England’s war lords 
that wooden fleets had had their day. 

But Holland knew that the example of other 
nations, in this case the United States, would 
force England to adopt ironclads, and that, 
once accepting new-fangled ideas, she would 
be more enterprising in putting them into prac¬ 
tice than any other country. Holland decided 
that his work lay beyond such ships and 
against them. He constituted himself a Jack- 
the-Giant-killer, drafting plans in his Cork 
schoolhouse aiming at the inception of a 
lilliputian craft that would sink a mighty 
dreadnaught—a British craft for preference. 

His anti-British attitude turned his thoughts 
from submitting his schemes to the British 
admiralty or shipbuilders. How he felt about 
it in those days he thus confided in a reminis¬ 
cent mood: 


38 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

“I knew that in a country where coal and 
iron and mechanical skill were as plenty as 
they were in England, the development of the 
large armor-plated ships must come first. 
Therefore I must get to a place where me¬ 
chanics in shipbuilding were less advanced, 
and the available material for big armor-clad 
vessels scarcer. Then, too, I was an Irishman. 
I had never taken part in political agitation, 
but my sympathies were with my own country, 
and I had no mind to do anything that would 
make John Bull any stronger and more dom¬ 
ineering than we had already found him. ,, 

Incidentally, the time was to come when the 
Holland submarine, conceived as a weapon 
against England, became an auxiliary arm of 
that country as a protection to her Grand 
Fleet. 


CHAPTER III 


The Confederate “Davids” as forerunners of the 
Holland boats.—Effect on inventor’s mind of the 
Huxley's achievement in sinking the Housatonic .— 
Bauer’s submarine (German), Bushnell’s Turtle and 
Fulton’s Nautilus as further object lessons.—Sub¬ 
marining as a discouraging pursuit.—Hostile public 
sentiment. — Practical undersea navigation science 
scoffed at as a dream. 

Again the naval innovations produced by 
the Civil War invited Holland’s attention. He 
speedily realized that there were many things 
to be studied, if only in order to avoid them. 
The Union government had been beguiled into 
constructing an iron undersea boat, thirty-five 
feet in length and six feet in diameter, to de¬ 
stroy the Merrimac. The Confederates them¬ 
selves sank the Merrimac after her bout with 
the Monitor . Perhaps they foresaw her ulti¬ 
mate destruction by a submerged foe. She 
would probably have been equal to any attack 
by the iron boat named; at any rate, no use 
was made of the contrivance. It was equipped 
with apparatus for producing oxygen, and the 
air was to be purified by forcing it through a 
vessel containing lime. The method of attack 
called for a diver in submarine armor who was 
to leave the boat and attach a torpedo, ex- 


40 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

ploded by clockwork, to the enemy craft. The 
inventor was a Frenchman who decamped 
after receiving his rewards. 

The Confederates were more enterprising. 
They built several semi-submarines about 
which little has been written. These craft, 
known as “Davids,” were so called as a tribute 
to David Bushnell, one of Holland’s forerun¬ 
ners, and also because they sent an enemy to 
“Davy Jones’s Locker.” They were designed 
to destroy the largest ships of the Union fleet. 

The first boat was built of boiler iron, cylin¬ 
drical in the center, with conical ends, and had 
a length of 54 feet, a beam of 5.6 feet, and a 
height of 5.6 feet in the center. 

It was provided with an ordinary boiler 
which generated steam for a marine engine 
coupled direct to a shaft connected to the pro¬ 
peller. 

For offensive purposes water ballast was 
taken into tanks and the boat submerged 
awash. In this condition of trim only some 
ten feet in length of superstructure could be 
seen. She then looked like a mass of timber 
with a projecting funnel. The funnel, being 
telescopic, could be lowered several feet to 
make the boat as invisible as practicable. A 
torpedo was carried on the end of a long spar. 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 41 

It consisted of a copper case with semispherical 
ends, measured 10 inches in diameter and 
32 inches in length, and contained 134 pounds 
of gunpowder provided with chemical fuses, 
which exploded the charge on coming in con¬ 
tact with an enemy ship. The automatic tor¬ 
pedo had not then been developed. 

These steam “Davids” were not constructed 
to dive, but took in water ballast for running 
on the surface awash. The first boat was suc¬ 
cessfully launched and manned by a volunteer 
crew. In one of the first trials a passing 
steamer caused a heavy swell to break over the 
boat when the hatch was open. This swirled 
down the opening and swamped the boat. The 
commanding officer was the only one of the 
crew saved. Notwithstanding this mishap, 
the boat was raised and a second volunteer 
crew, under Lieutenant Glassell, after a few 
trial trips, essayed a night attack on October 5, 
1863, against the Federal ships off Charleston. 
He fell in with the Ironsides, a ship much 
dreaded on account of her heavy attacks on the 
forts. In common with other ships, the Iron¬ 
sides had been specially warned to look out for 
submarine attacks, and after dark shifted her 
anchorage every night. 

The officer of the watch on this occasion saw 


42 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

approaching what seemed like a plank with a 
cylindrical pole attached to it. The quarter¬ 
master was thereupon ordered to hail the ob¬ 
ject. The reply was a volley of musketry from 
the open hatch of the submarine, killing a 
Federal officer. The object came closer. 
Shortly afterward there was a heavy explosion, 
which shook the vessel, threw a column of 
water on the spar deck, broke a man’s leg, 
flooded the engine room, and started many 
leaks, with some external damage above the 
water line. The explosion was effected by a 
spar torpedo, but it was set too near the sur¬ 
face, and the damage done, therefore, was not 
so great as it might have been had the charge 
been more submersed. Moreover, it swamped 
the submarine. The lieutenant and two others 
saved themselves by swimming clear of the 
boat and were rescued by a coaling schooner. 

Early in 1864, Admiral Dahlgren, com¬ 
manding the Northern squadron, was warned 
by spies that an improved submarine had been 
launched, of a slightly different type from that 
which attacked the Ironsides. He ordered 
extra lookout precautions to be taken, but few 
of his officers believed the submarine would be 
able to reach the outer anchorage of Charles¬ 
ton harbor. The Southerners were aware of 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 43 

this confident view, and determined at all haz¬ 
ards to reach the ships and blow up as many 
as they could. 

Their new weapon was known as the 
Huxley , and became of note as the only sub¬ 
mersible they possessed which produced effect¬ 
ive results. It was a cigar-shaped craft of 
boiler iron and measured 35 feet in length, 3 
feet in beam, and 5 feet in depth. It had a 
small conning tower, very low. The vessel 
was propelled by hand power, not steam, as 
were the early boats. A crew of eight men 
worked on a sort of pump handle for turning 
the propeller, and another man steered. The 
air supply was sufficient to last the crew two to 
three hours. A form of hydroplane was fitted 
externally at the foremast end to assist in 
keeping the boat low in the water and for mak¬ 
ing small dives. 

Like her sisters, the Huxley was at the 
mercy of the swell caused by passing steamers, 
and underwent some tragic sinkings before 
effecting her crowning achievement. The ac¬ 
cidents occurred only when the vessel was on 
the surface; while operating submerged, it 
was safe. Once, as it lay awash, with hatches 
open, the swell sank it, with eight of its crew, 
only its commander escaping. It was raised, 


44 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

a new crew volunteered, and capsized again, 
with the hatches open, this time losing six of 
the crew. Again the boat was raised, the crew 
remanned, and an experimental trip made to 
the sea bed. There it remained, for reasons 
unknown, with its new crew of nine dead 
within it. The Confederacy was not lacking 
in brave and devoted men. Once more the 
boat was brought to the surface, and a fourth 
crew volunteered, eager to risk their lives in 
another descent. 

On the night of February 17th they suc¬ 
ceeded in getting the boat over the bar, and 
directed her on the surface toward the nearest 
vessel anchored off Charleston. This turned 
out to be the new wooden U. S. frigate 
Housatonic. The officer of the watch and 
lookouts saw, a few hundred yards off, what 
they thought was a small boat making toward 
them. On nearing the ship the strange craft 
was hailed, but no answer came. The crew 
were at once sent to quarters; but it was then 
ascertained that the pivot guns could not be 
depressed sufficiently to hit the object if they 
had been fired. The order was next given to 
slip the warship’s cable. The stranger came 
nearer and touched the side. As the propel¬ 
lers of the big ship moved, a loud explosion 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 45 
followed the grazing arid cracking sound of 
the breaking spar which carried the torpedo 
from the bow of the submarine. Admiral 
Porter thus described what happened: 

“At about 8.45 P. M. the officer of the deck 
discovered something in the water, about a 
hundred yards away, moving toward the ship. 
It had the appearance of a plank moving along 
the water. It came directly toward the ship 
and, within two minutes of the time it was first 
sighted, was alongside. The chains were 
slipped, the engines backed, and all hands 
called to quarters. But it was too late; the tor¬ 
pedo struck the Housatonic just forward of 
the mainmast on the starboard side in line with 
the magazine. When the explosion took place 
the ship trembled all over, as if by the shock 
of an earthquake, and then sank stern fore¬ 
most, heeling to port as she went down.” 

Many of the crew were saved by the boats 
of a ship anchored near by, but an ensign and 
several men were drowned. 

For a time it was supposed that the Huxley 
had escaped. But nothing more was seen of 
her. Some years later, when divers were sent 
down to examine the wreck of the Housatonic, 
they found the gallant vessel lying alongside 
the big ship, with the bodies of her fourth crew 


46 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

of nine men on board. It was supposed that 
the Huxley had been drawn by suction into the 
hole her torpedo made in the Housatonic and 
held there by the water pressure. 

Thus the fourth crew went the way of the 
others, but with the sinking of a fighting ship 
to their credit. Of the thirty-six men who 
formed the four crews, thirty-two were 
drowned. 

The Huxley's exploit was the first instance 
of a submarine destroying an enemy, and the 
last until the Great War of 1914. Here loomed 
an interval exceeding half a century. Brood¬ 
ing over his inchoate plans amid his scholastic 
environment in Cork, Holland could not read¬ 
ily conceive—if he ever permitted the fantastic 
dream seriously to possess him—that his 
would be the mind that would direct the sub¬ 
marine to the development it reached in the 
twentieth century. That was to be his destiny, 
though fifty years was a long way to look for¬ 
ward to its realization. The foolhardy daring 
of the Huxley had registered an important 
notch in the vicissitudes of early under-sea 
navigation; it proved that the submarine, even 
in its then primitive stage, was worthy of re¬ 
spect. “The fish of steel w T ith the brains of a 
man” was in the horning. 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 47 

The Conderates were not the first to use a 
submarine in time of war. The credit for this 
distinction belongs to a Bavarian soldier, 
Wilhelm Bauer, a wood turner by trade, who, 
a decade earlier, devised a craft for Germany 
in the shape of a dolphin, which succeeded in 
breaking up the blockade of the Danish fleet 
off Kiel. Later the vessel was sunk, due to the 
collapse of her hull from excessive water 
pressure, the crew escaping. Bauer had try¬ 
ing experiences with his device that may be 
classed with Holland’s. Germany discour¬ 
aged his invention and he turned to England, 
then to America, then to Russia, his own coun¬ 
try branding him as unpatriotic, while herself 
discarding him. In 1855 his plan was accepted 
by Russia, for whom he built a boat, wherein, 
seventeen feet under water, he wrote letters to 
King Maximilian of Bavaria and the Grand 
Duke Constantine, and remained beneath the 
waves throughout the ceremonies attending 
the coronation of Alexander II in that year. 
In 1887 dredging operations in Kiel harbor 
caused the raising of the boat, which is now 
on exhibition in the Museum of Oceanography 
in Berlin. 

Even in the early days of Holland the world 
had nothing to learn regarding man’s ability 


48 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 
to live and work under water. The Revolu¬ 
tionary War had produced a boat which could 
be submerged and made to rise to the surface, 
navigable either below or on the water. This 
was the invention of an undergraduate of Yale 
College, David Bushnell. It was utilized in 
1776 against the British fleet, and embodied 
the fundamentals of most of the elements es¬ 
sential in successful submarine work. The 
boat, shaped like a turtle, and called the 
Turtle, floated in the water with the tail down. 
It was only large enough to hold one man. It 
had tanks and pumps, anchor operated from 
inside the boat, screw propeller at the bow, 
another at the top with its axis vertical, rudder 
and torpedo in the stern, and at the top of the 
boat a screw operated from within, intended to 
be worked into the planking of a ship at 
anchor. The torpedo was fastened to the 
screw by a line, and when the submarine moved 
away the torpedo remained with the screw. 
The torpedo was a block of oak containing a 
charge of about 150 pounds of gunpowder, and 
contained clockwork mechanism to enable the 
operator to escape before it exploded. 

An attempt was made one night in June, 
1776, to sink the British ship Eagle, sixty-four 
guns, anchored off Governors Island. The 



OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 49 
operator failed to attach the torpedo to the 
under-planking of the vessel, the screw having 
struck an iron bar, and the tide swept him 
away. Unable to reach the Eagle again, he 
detached the torpedo and left it floating on the 
water. Presently the British were startled by 
a terrific explosion, which left them unharmed 
but nervous. It would seem that had the 
Turtle been anchored under the Eagle , the 
operator would have been able to find a pur¬ 
chase for the torpedo screw in copper sheath¬ 
ing or wood, and thus have achieved his pur¬ 
pose. Certainly, the torpedo acquitted itself 
admirably, but was denied a close enough 
location to the vessel. Strong tides, the small 
speed of the boats, and the difficulty of seeing 
clearly when submerged caused the failure of 
the two other attempts to attach torpedoes to 
British vessels. 

The time was not ripe for submarines. Pub¬ 
lic opinion did not favor them, nor did govern¬ 
ments, then and later, even in Holland’s time. 

Some twenty years after Bushnell’s experi¬ 
ments with the Turtle , Robert Fulton devised 
his submarine already mentioned, embodying 
the same features, but on a larger scale, and 
met with the same discouragement. Like Hol¬ 
land, he was of humble origin. He first ac- 


SO THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

quired note in Europe as a painter, and later, 
in his native land, as a pioneer of the steam¬ 
ship. But as a submarine inventor he could 
not go far beyond paving the way—for Hol¬ 
land among others. 

Fulton's boat was in the form of an ovoid, 
very elongated, and nearly six feet in diame¬ 
ter. He improved on Bushnell by adding 
reservoirs containing compressed air, which 
enabled him to remain under water longer 
than any of his predecessors had succeeded in 
doing. A reservoir, into which water was in¬ 
troduced, caused the boat to dive at will, and a 
force pump, to drive out the water, caused her 
to rise. Sailing on the surface, he was able to 
furl sail, strike mast, and disappear within two 
minutes. In England he blew up an old hulk 
provided for the purpose, and destroyed a 
small schooner in Brest harbor. An experi¬ 
mental boat he built for France, called the 
Nautilus, was put through its paces on the 
Seine in 1801, but Napoleon declined to con¬ 
tinue the experiments because of the low speed 
attainable (about two knots) when submerged. 

The French Minister of Marine even re¬ 
fused Fulton the protection as a belligerent in 
the wars in which France was involved, on the 
ground that submarine warfare was piratical. 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 51 

“This type of warfare,” he said, “carries with 
it the objection that those who undertake it 
and those against whom it is made will all be 
lost.” 

This proved to be true enough in the Civil 
War, but it was too early a prophecy to apply 
to the World War. It undoubtedly expressed 
the popular and official sentiment of the time, 
with the result that England and the United 
States, as well as France, rejected Fulton’s 
boat, and he discontinued further experiments. 
He turned his attention with more profit to the 
navigation of ships by steam. 

Holland thus had ample-discouraging prece¬ 
dents to divert him from pursuing his hobby. 
Up to his leaving Ireland for America in the 
early ’seventies of the last century, the subma¬ 
rine was still regarded as an uncanny and 
brutal thing, when it was not scoffed at as a 
pipe dream. But the chief objection to it was 
its insecurity. Every man who went below the 
waves in such a contrivance gambled with 
death. The truth, of course, was that the way 
to successful undersea navigation had not yet 
been discovered. The underlying principles re¬ 
mained, as they had done for centuries, half- 
baked in the minds of inventors. They had 
yet to develop and coalesce their ideas into a 


52 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

practical science. Holland, however, had 
reached firm ground. Bushnell, Fulton, and 
the others provided it, but they did no more. 
He started to build where they left off. 


CHAPTER IV 


Holland's task to raise the submarine from the plane 
of immaturity.—What an efficient submarine must not 
do.—His early design for harbor defense.—The tor¬ 
pedo problem.—Preserving a boat’s specific gravity and 
controlling her descent.—Water ballast.—Adjusting a 
boat’s operation to the changing specific gravity of 
water, salt and fresh.—Jules Verne’s Nautilus as a fic¬ 
tional forerunner of the developed Holland type. 

Holland’s first submarine plans were 
drafted in 1859, when he was a youth of seven¬ 
teen. One sketch showed a boat with a gun¬ 
powder engine for motive power. Later he 
discarded it as worthless. This matter of lo¬ 
comotion—an engine suitable for a submarine 
—early arose among other problems. He was 
of opinion that previous experiments with sub¬ 
marines had failed chiefly because the need of 
proper motor power had not been realized. An 
undersea boat inadequately powered was as 
useful as a water-logged ship; poor motor 
power made a poor submarine. 

In 1870, while taking a vacation, he gave re¬ 
newed study to this and other physical diffi- 
cuties. He was daunted by the task he set 
himself, devising a practical trustworthy sub¬ 
mersible seemed so insuperable. But he de¬ 
cided that the idea was at least worthy of cold 


54 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 
investigation before finally rejecting it as un¬ 
workable. 

He had a long road to traverse beyond that 
followed by Bushnell and Fulton. He set out 
to raise the submarine above the plane of im¬ 
maturity. It should not be the victim of its 
own depredations nor be sunk by the swell of 
passing vessels through poor seamanship, like 
the Huxley; not have to depend on a torpedo 
attached to a screw or at the end of a long 
spar to effect its purpose. Going under water 
need not be a hazardous undertaking; remain¬ 
ing on the sea bed could be safe. Strong tides 
need not be a deterrent to navigation. There 
must be propulsion by other means than man 
power. Storage of energy and, equally impor¬ 
tant, storage of air, must be provided for, and 
clear vision when submerged, both within and 
without the boat. There must also be proper 
ballast and buoyancy and the consequent re¬ 
tention of specific gravity; and torpedoes must 
be self-propelled without disturbing the ves¬ 
sel's balance. 

At the outset of these renewed studies came 
the initial difficulty of carrying sufficient air 
to support the life of those within a submerged 
boat. The first question a layman asked about 
submarine navigation was, how long could a 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 55 
crew live on the amount of air ordinarily car¬ 
ried? Long afterward, several practical ex¬ 
periments were undertaken to demonstrate 
this. The first was made with the Holland 
submarine Fulton, and clearly proved that a 
crew of men could remain in a submarine sub¬ 
merged for several weeks on the amount of 
air actually carried in the boat at the time of 
submergence. Holland early succeeded in 
convincing himself that this fundamental ele¬ 
ment of air presented no obstacle that could 
not be overcome. 

The next question was, how to prevent the 
boat from sinking to the bottom when under 
water and how to handle her when submerged, 
in case sufficient power were available. He 
readily found the solution to this problem. It 
'was plain that if the boat and its contents to¬ 
gether were of the same weight as an equal 
volume of water, a very slight force would 
make the boat move in any direction, either up, 
down, or horizontal, and, therefore, it could 
be propelled by the ordinary propeller and its 
motions in the vertical plane controlled by or¬ 
dinary rudders. There seemed to be no other 
vital difficulties in the way. The question of 
the strength of shell to resist pressure of the 
water was, apparently, simple. 


56 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

One of the tests we had to make with every 
submarine built later for the United States 
government was to sink the boat to a depth of 
200 feet and remain at that point fifteen min¬ 
utes before coming to the surface. The pres¬ 
sure per square inch on the hull at this depth 
is about 93 pounds. In this test we had to 
demonstrate that the boat was sufficiently 
strong to withstand the pressure without undue 
strains or leaks. 

Holland completed a design that embodied 
most of the principles developed later in the 
perfected boats. It embraced the building of 
a craft for harbor defense only, large enough 
to carry one or two torpedoes and two or three 
men. After the plan was completed, he laid it 
carefully aside among other papers and 
thought little more about the subject. 

The plan embraced the germ of a torpedo 
boat that would combine the maximum of pro¬ 
tection for both boat and crew, with accurate 
steering, and the greatest allowable speed, de¬ 
structiveness, and steadiness. Thus equipped, 
a boat should be able to attack at a distance of 
one to two thousand yards, and be brought 
near enough to an enemy to fire a submerged 
torpedo with a minimum of risk and injury. 

Discharging torpedoes, however, would in- 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 57 
volve a disturbance of a boat’s balance without 
safeguards. The weight of a discharged tor¬ 
pedo must therefore be replaced. Otherwise 
an alteration in trim would be caused by the 
change of position of each torpedo in the in¬ 
terior of the vessel while loading it into the 
expulsion tube and in making ready to fire it. 
It was necessary to maintain the total weight 
and trim of the vessel unaltered by the process 
of loading, firing, and reloading the expulsion 
tube. 

Hence the preservation of the specific 
gravity of the boat as a whole, and of its trim, 
was of high importance. To a constant depth 
of submersion the boat’s specific gravity must 
be maintained, or at least be capable of nice 
variation by suitable devices within the control 
of those on board, and not open to chance vari¬ 
ation. It was equally important that a boat’s 
center of gravity should be protected from 
chance variation, especially fore and aft, where 
such a disturbance would arbitrarily affect the 
relative immersion of the bow and stern. The 
tendency to chance variation in both the spe¬ 
cific gravity and the center of gravity was due, 
in addition to the launching of torpedoes, to 
fuel consumption and the expenditure of am¬ 
munition in firing. Holland’s device for safe- 


58 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

guarding the boat from such variations— 
though at this time he was a long way from 
reaching the stages of development I am out¬ 
lining—was the automatic admission of water 
in fhe spaces occupied by the fuel, torpedo, or 
other substance consumed in the proportion 
that would compensate, by weight and posi¬ 
tion, for the weight lost by the boat. 

It was also necessary to control auto¬ 
matically the depth to which the boat de¬ 
scended. Provision must be made to avoid the 
risk of injury from striking the bed of a 
waterway and from the hydrostatic pressure 
encountered at too great depths. The need, 
simply stated, was for a means of sustaining 
and increasing the buoyancy of a boat to an 
extent sufficient to arrest its further descent 
after it had reached the predetermined depth 
of submersion. Holland for this purposejwas 
to introduce compressed air reacting on and 
displacing dispensable water in the usual bal¬ 
last tanks and of a tension sufficient to exer¬ 
cise a force greater than the hydrostatic 
pressure. 

Further regulation of water ballast was 
called for to enable a submarine to operate 
with equal facility in fresh or salt water or in 
an uncertain mixture of both. Tanks, either 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 59 

wholly or partly filled with water, were to be 
the means of putting a boat in proper condi¬ 
tion for diving. A like need was the provision 
of a special ballast tank whose water must be 
so regulated—increased or diminished at will 
—as to adapt the boat to the degree of salinity 
of the water in which it was to operate, so that 
it would dive with facility. This requirement 
was due, of course, to the difference in specific 
gravity of salt and fresh water and the vari¬ 
ation of this difference from the degree of 
salinity. The rapidity with which a boat could 
be put in diving condition depended on regu¬ 
lating automatically its total weight. The 
weight should increase in proportion to the in¬ 
creased specific gravity of the water as the 
boat passed from fresh to saline water, and 
be correspondingly reduced in moving from salt 
to fresh water. Holland was to devise auto¬ 
matic means of varying the total weight of 
the vessel in accordance with the specific grav¬ 
ity of the water of flotation. A point of 
moment was the need to affect the change 
quickly and in bad weather, without the re¬ 
quirement of great care by the person operat¬ 
ing the boat. 

The testing of submarines was dictated by 
the specific weight of the water in which they 


60 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

operated. They were usually tried out in bays, 
harbors, and estuaries along the coast, where 
fresh water flows in considerable quantity. 
The variable specific weight of the water at 
different points, due to different degrees of 
salinity, produced material variation in the 
buoyant power of the water. 

In New York harbor, for example, which 
became Holland’s field of operations, the spe¬ 
cific weight of the water varied at different 
points. This variation was found to be due to 
currents which changed with the stages of the 
tides and the direction and force of the wind. 
There was a consequent—and inconvenient— 
variation in the buoyancy of a submarine boat. 
With changing conditions of tide and winds 
these variations in specific weight were mani¬ 
fested at the same point in a bay or harbor at 
different times. 

Consider what would happen if a submarine 
boat were adjusted for diving with the proper 
reserve for buoyancy in water which had 
reached the maximum of salinity, and with 
ballast tanks filled without adjustment for 
buoyancy at the minimum salinity of the water. 
It would sink to the bottom. What would hap¬ 
pen under the reverse conditions, where the 
reserve buoyancy was adjusted for fresh water, 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 61 
or for water of flotation having the minimum 
salinity ? The boat would not dive in water of 
the maximum salinity or specific weight. If 
the boat’s volume displaced 75 tons in fresh 
water, 2.1744 tons of its volume would emerge 
or be exposed above the surface were the boat 
placed in salt water of ordinary salinity. As 
the volume of reserve buoyancy was only about 
seven per cent of this difference, it was ap¬ 
parent that differences in the specific weight 
of the water must be provided by changing the 
boat’s weight correspondingly. 

All these considerations of submarine oper¬ 
ations were problems in store for Holland to 
solve in practice. They are surveyed here 
from the vantage point provided by the per¬ 
spective of time, as a sort of uncharted sea that 
he was to penetrate, and in which he had to 
find his own bearings by means of the compass 
located in his resourceful mind. 

It is something more than a coincidence that 
the year in which Holland came to the United 
States (1872) was marked by the publication 
of Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues 
Under the Sea . So Holland had fiction as a 
basis for his studies, as well as fact. The point 
was of moment. Jules Verne founded his sub¬ 
marine of fiction upon the submarine of fact, 


62 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

and then departed from fact in order to make 
his Nautilus (named after Fulton’s boat) 
achieve wonders beyond the field of the possi¬ 
bilities of the time. Holland had not yet 
“arrived” to show how faithfully Jules Verne’s 
fiction was foreshadowing fact. How closely 
the modern submarine realized the imaginary 
craft of Jules Verne was thus remarked by 
C. H. Bedell in 1917 in addressing the Ameri¬ 
can Society of Mechanical Engineers on Hol¬ 
land’s achievements: 

“As far as the handling of a submarine is 
concerned, whether under way, on the surface 
or submerged, or at rest on the surface, poised 
at any depth or resting on the bottom, the boats 
of the present day are as perfect as the 
Nautilus of Jules Verne. We may even, if 
we so desire, make our boat so that when it is 
at rest submerged, a man with a diving helmet, 
and entirely disconnected from the submarine 
or the surface, may pass from it into the sea 
and explore the ocean floor for an hour or 
more, as Captain Nemo of the Nautilus did. 
That such construction is not used is due to 
the fact that there seems to be no material need 
for such operations.” 

Captain Nemo and his crew performed 
several feats beyond the range of Holland or 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 63 
any other inventor. They drove the vessel by 
electricity, not obtained from storage batteries, 
but from the sea itself by a method unex¬ 
plained, and with propulsion from such a 
source managed to travel round the globe on 
one supply of energy. A real submarine of 
to-day has to ascend periodically to recharge 
its storage batteries. Perhaps the future has 
in store a self-sustaining submarine producing 
its own energy as it proceeds. Captain Nemo 
also sent his Nautilus down to depths of 6,000 
feet and more, which involved a water pres¬ 
sure exceeding 5,000 tons, a weight no boat as 
described by Verne could have borne, espe¬ 
cially with its large glass windows. The 
author, among other things, gave unusual 
vision to Captain Nemo and his men by making 
them see objects under the sea half or three- 
quarters of a mile away by the light of the sun 
or by strong electric lamps. Real eyes cannot 
penetrate the sea through anything like such a 
distance, even with the aid of powerful illu- 
minants. Barring these departures from 
reality, Jules Verne was showing Holland what 
could be done. 


CHAPTER V 


Holland in America as an immigrant.—Renews his 
submarine studies in Boston.—Project shelved.—Mark¬ 
ing time as a teacher in Paterson, New Jersey.—Ap¬ 
proaches United States government with his invention. 
—Official discouragement.—Irish financial aid enables 
him to build a boat.—Trial in Passaic River helped by 
power from an improvised steam launch with a beer 
barrel for boiler.—Inventor stays under water twenty- 
four hours.—Device derided.—Friends gratified by test 
and assist him to build a better boat.—Abandons teach¬ 
ing for submarine building. 


Holland had reached the age of thirty be¬ 
fore he left Ireland for the United States. His 
salary of thirty pounds a year (then about 
$150) did not yield much surplus, even for the 
frugal bachelor that he was. The accumula¬ 
tion of a sum sufficient to cover a steerage pas¬ 
sage to an American port meant waiting on 
time, but waiting on time was one of the first 
things an inventor had to learn. 

He had been teaching for fourteen years, or 
since he was sixteen, a period long enough to 
shape a man permanently to the trade he fol¬ 
lowed and render him unadaptable to another 
pursuit. His equipment for his future field as 
a submarine pioneer was wholly theoretical. 
By actual experience he knew nothing of de¬ 
termining the gravity of a floatable object 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 65 

under water, of the niceties of ballast and its 
relation to water weight, of the manifold vari¬ 
ations in the specific gravity of fresh and salt 
water or a blend of both. There is ample water 
round Cork, but no Holland submarine ever 
entered it. His submarine was under his hat. 
Not Cork harbor, but the Passaic River was 
to enlighten him beyond the sound theoretical 
knowledge he had patiently acquired as a back¬ 
ground in Ireland. 

In November, 1872, he found himself an 
immigrant in Boston, taking up his quarters 
with his mother and two brothers, who were 
living there at the time. A young man of 
slender build, under medium height, Irish from 
top to toe, with a rich brogue that flavored the 
clear enunciation he had acquired from his 
calling, and with twinkling, humorous eyes 
peering through spectacles, he looked about 
wonderingly at his new surroundings, but not 
as a field for exploiting a submarine yet un¬ 
born. He was rather concerned about seeking 
a livelihood as a teacher. 

His dream, however, had received a new 
impetus in his changed environment. It took 
him one winter day to the Boston Public 
Library in search of literature on the subject 
of submarines. He found none. This was not 


66 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

surprising. Submarine literature did not begin 
until twenty years or more later, when Holland 
himself in large part was to create it. In re¬ 
turning from the Library he slipped on an icy 
pavement and broke a leg—a mishap which 
laid him up for three months. It occasioned 
an enforced inactivity which inevitably be¬ 
guiled his mind to a renewed study of his 
hobby. His submarine plan lay in an old en¬ 
velope, and the envelope was buried at the 
bottom of his trunk. He decided to let it stay 
there. 

“Wait,” he thought. “Let me do it again, 
and see what will be the difference between the 
submarine I would build to-day and the one I 
thought out long ago.” 

In his convalescence he drew another set of 
plans and compared the result with his original 
scheme, the details of which he had forgotten. 
The two he found identical in almost every 
element. He had thus evolved the same plan 
twice, with a wide interval of time between, 
and he reasoned therefrom that he must be on 
the right track. It was a naive conclusion, but 
not a wrong one. He had to depend upon his 
own thinking processes—for he was delving 
into a field of nautical science which up to his 
day had proven so barren that little or nothing 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 67 

had been written about it to guide him. Never¬ 
theless, the second plan had to go the way of 
the first—it was laid aside. 

The year 1873 brought him to Paterson, 
New Jersey, where he resumed teaching at a 
parochial school. There he marked time for 
two years, laying up mental and financial am¬ 
munition for continuing his submarine work. 
His pay was better than he had received in 
Cork, but his savings did not go very far to¬ 
ward meeting the outlay needed for building 
an experimental boat. 

His thoughts turned to the United States 
government as a possible sponsor, and in 1875 
private funds were promised him for develop¬ 
ing his invention if he could win over the gov¬ 
ernment to indorse his plans. The outcome 
was the careful preparation of a free-hand 
drawing of a boat with a cigar-shaped shell 
fifteen feet long, in which was room for one 
man sitting upright, who was to be the steers¬ 
man and crew, his legs furnishing the motive 
power by means of a treadle, which worked a 
screw propeller. An indirect opening to the 
Navy Department was provided by Holland's 
contact with a young friend or relative of 
George M. Robeson, who was Secretary of 
the Navy at the time under President Grant. 


68 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

This naval student had failed in his first ex¬ 
amination for the navy, and Holland coached 
him for his next essay, enabling him to pass 
his second examination. Holland availed him¬ 
self of this link with high officialdom and sub¬ 
mitted his plan to Secretary Robeson, who re¬ 
ferred it to Captain, later Admiral, Edward 
Simpson, then stationed at the newly estab¬ 
lished War College at Newport, Rhode Island. 

Captain Simpson carefully studied Hol¬ 
land’s plans, but, while admitting the eventual 
practicality of everything claimed for the boat, 
he did not believe any man in his senses could 
be persuaded to operate it, and that if a lunatic 
was found who would go down in the vessel, 
there would be no way of directing it under 
water. It would be like a man trying to navi¬ 
gate a vessel in a fog. 

“And this,” Holland declared, “in face of 
the fact that the Confederate ‘Davids’ had 
drowned crew after crew, but had never 
wanted for volunteers, and also that I was 
prepared to show that a compass would work 
as well under water as on the surface.” 

Besides, vessels had been navigated safely 
in fogs for a great many years. 

Later Holland wrote Captain Simpson re¬ 
questing his advice unofficially as to what he 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 69 

should do. In reply the captain again admitted 
that the plans seemed all right, but advised 
Holland to drop the whole matter, assuring 
him that putting anything through the Navy 
Department was uphill work. “Anything” 
was very broad and even covered perfection 
itself. Holland judged that it was wise to 
follow the advice and put the matter aside for 
the time being. 

Two years later a group of Irish associates 
had sufficient faith in his project to advance 
him funds to build a boat on the lines rejected 
by Captain Simpson. Its construction was 
conditioned upon their engineers approving 
the design. Holland prepared a model about 
thirty inches long, propelled by a coiled spring 
animated by clockwork. A New York metal 
spinner wound a hull round the clockwork. 
The model was tried out at Coney Island and 
acted as Holland forecast both under water 
and on the surface. His backers were satis¬ 
fied and sanctioned the building of a boat to 
hold one man. 

There seemed some warrant for proceeding 
with the project. Captain Simpson had dis¬ 
carded Holland's design largely owing to the 
inadequacy of its motive power. What looked 
like meeting Holland's great need—a motor 


70 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

adaptable to a submarine—appeared on the 
scene. It was a petroleum engine patented by 
George Brayton in 1874. Holland examined 
it and thought it would meet requirements. 
The engine proved to be a false alarm, but such 
as the opportunity was, Holland availed him¬ 
self of it. The oil engine was the only motive 
power available at the time; the day of the 
storage battery had yet to come. 

A pair of engines was built to fit the boat 
at a Brooklyn machine shop. The hull was a 
product of the old Albany Street ironworks in 
New York City. The completed craft, which 
was shipped to the inventor at Paterson for 
trial, followed the general principles of Bush- 
nell’s Turtle. It was too primitive to be revo¬ 
lutionary. In fact, a similar under-water bi¬ 
cycle, as it was termed, was tested at Odessa 
about this time. Holland’s object in building 
it was to find a working basis for producing a 
better craft. 

The boat was ten feet long and sloped to a 
point at both ends. It really consisted of two 
air tanks held a few feet apart by angle irons 
lined with sheet iron. The space between the 
outside shell and the lining formed the ballast 
tank; between the air tanks and inside the lin¬ 
ing were the engines, air pump, gauges, etc., 





PLAN OF SUBMARINE BOAT DESIGNED BY JOHN P. HOLLAND AND BUILT AT DELAMATER TRON WORKS, l88o. THIS 

plan is in Holland’s own handwriting 

































































































OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 71 

and room for the operator, who was so con¬ 
fined in the narrow space that no man bigger 
than Holland could enter and occupy the boat 
with the turret closed. 

The boat was launched on the placid Passaic 
River, a little distance above the falls. It was 
a great day for Holland in this memorable 
summer of 1877, and an anxious one. If the 
result was not wholly glorious, at least a de¬ 
cided landmark in his experiences had been 
reached. 

The launching could not be easily accom¬ 
plished. Holland worked amid the clatter and 
roar of Paterson's silk factories and machine 
shops, with their multitude of operators. His 
submarine experiment had caught their eager 
interest; every time the inventor appeared in 
the vicinity where his craft lay he was sur¬ 
rounded by a mob of mill hands. He was 
seized with stage fright each time and retired 
precipitately. 

The little craft was finally towed well up 
the river, and the inventor went down in her. 
He then discovered that the motor apparatus 
installed was not operated by oil. It turned 
out to be an ordinary pair of slide-valve steam 
engines. Their constructor had run them by 
compressed air and misled Holland into the be- 


72 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 
lief that oil was used. Holland had no intimate 
knowledge of engine work, but on discovering 
that he had steam engines in the submarine, he 
set out to utilize them by what means were 
available. A little boat was at hand, converted 
by its owner into a steam launch, a beer barrel 
serving as the boiler. With the consent of the 
launch's owner, Holland ran a line of hose 
from the barrel boiler to the engine of the 
submarine, the launch trailing behind as he 
steamed on the surface or dived. 

In this manner he conducted his first sub¬ 
marine experiment. Both the runs on the sur¬ 
face and the dives were short because the sub¬ 
marine engines required more steam than the 
launch used; there was also loss of power 
through condensation in the line of hose, es¬ 
pecially when the boat dived. However, 
Holland had proved that the boat was prac¬ 
ticable or would be with a suitable engine. His 
copartners sat in the launch and watched the 
pressure disappear in the steam gauge, which 
obviated any argument as to why the runs and 
dives were short. In all he remained under 
water an hour, but this was not sufficient to 
satisfy his backers, who, before incurring any 
more expense, wanted to know how long a 
man could remain under water. Holland 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 73 

promised them he could stay at the bottom o£ 
the Passaic for twenty-four hours. 

Testing the air supply was soon determined. 
There was a pair of mooring rings on the sub¬ 
marine placed well toward either end. One 
Friday evening toward six o'clock a rope was 
made fast to each mooring ring. Holland 
boarded the submarine and, after fastening 
the turret, sank her to the bed of the river. In 
two boats on the surface were four men, two 
in each, holding the end of the ropes hitched 
to the mooring rings. These men were wit¬ 
nesses that Holland went down and stayed; he 
could neither move the boat nor emerge with¬ 
out their knowledge. 

He remained at the bottom until 6p. m. the 
following day, when he blew out the water 
ballast and came to the surface. 

Altogether, the boat behaved as well as it 
could under the circumstances. Summing up 
its achievements, it stuck in the mud when 
launched; it continually leaked; its engine 
balked repeatedly—and no wonder. But Hol¬ 
land remained in it under water for twenty- 
four hours. He always insisted that it em¬ 
bodied the essential principles of his more de¬ 
veloped submarines, and that, despite its 
mechanical and structural defects, it had suffi- 


74 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 
ciently proved the soundness of his underlying 
conception. 

The press and public of the day viewed it as 
a joke. It was certainly of no value for further 
experiments; a larger boat was needed. Hol¬ 
land had the craft stripped of everything that 
could profitably be removed, and abandoned 
the hull on the river bank. It sank in four feet 
of mud and there it lies to-day. 

His friends were so gratified with the out¬ 
come, barring the engine failure, that they 
readily assented to his building a bigger boat. 
This more ambitious project was not under¬ 
taken until 1879. Holland by this time began 
to feel on firm ground—the ground was none 
too firm—as a designer of submersibles, es¬ 
pecially in view of renewed financial support. 
The outlook led him to give up his ferule at the 
Paterson school and to devote his whole time 
to his second venture. 


CHAPTER VI 


The mysterious Fenian Ram .—The engine problem. 
—Projectile tests and their oddities.—Strange voyages 
under New York harbor. — Suspicions of designs 
against British craft, due to Fenian unrest in Ireland. 
—The Fenian Skirmishing Fund the source of Hol¬ 
land’s financial backing.—Irish-American factors in the 
development of the submarine.—Fenian aims and hopes. 
—Real significance of the Fenian Ram .—The modern 
submarine an outgrowth of the Irish question.—The 
boat and a companion model stolen.—End of Fenian 
support of Holland. 


The result was the Fenian Ram, on which 
hangs more than a tale. The boat took two 
years to build, at a cost of $13,000. Its con¬ 
struction, though not secret, was shrouded in 
mystery. It evoked the most fascinating of 
speculations. It was designed for use in war ; 
but no war was in sight except the chronic 
strife between England and Ireland. Its prog¬ 
ress toward completion, for all who cared to 
look on, was to be observed at the East River 
shipyard of the old and noted firm of Dela- 
mater at the foot of Thirteenth Street. Many 
foreigners, some of them naval officers, 
watched the craft take shape. Two Turks, 
who held high posts under the Sultan, were 
so attracted by the enterprise that they be¬ 
sought Holland to design a submarine for their 


76 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

government, but the inventor had not yet 
reached the stage of supplying war craft to 
other countries. 

Its length was 30 feet; at its widest the 
diameter extended to 6 feet, and inside, be¬ 
tween the air tanks, was space for three oper¬ 
ators, engine room and a pilot house. The boat 
displaced 17 tons gross. Its size was deter¬ 
mined on for various reasons, one of which 
was (the reporters discovered this with a wise 
wink) that the boat could be contained in a 
railroad box car of the period and carried to 
any point perfectly concealed. It had vertical 
and horizontal rudders, and had an air gun or 
bow tube which could be discharged under 
water. It was probably the first submarine 
torpedo boat, if the term torpedo be given its 
widest significance. 

Holland's partners tardily realized the need 
of an adequate engine, the outlay for which 
they had demurred to in the building of the 
discarded boat. They became eager to utilize 
the petroleum engine invented by Brayton, to 
be built by the inventor himself, but required 
that it be properly tested before the boat was 
constructed. 

At this time the future of the oil engine could 
not be foretold, for which perhaps Brayton’s 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 77 
peculiar device was in part responsible. Al¬ 
most every detail, according to Holland’s 
brother Michael, was ill considered and com¬ 
plicated, and the working parts defectively 
proportioned; but a newcomer could only dis¬ 
cover these by a costly experience. Holland, 
having little acquaintance with oil engines, had 
to depend solely on Bray ton in determining 
the size of the engine for the new boat. From 
what he could learn he got Brayton to build a 
ten-inch cylinder double-acting engine; that is, 
there were two explosions to the revolution. 
This size did not give Holland the speed he 
needed, but it served his purpose. The engine 
proved to be a better product than Brayton had 
so far turned out, thanks to Holland’s sugges¬ 
tions. It was rated at 17 horse-power. The 
great stimulus which the application of the 
multi-cylinder principle was to give the oil en¬ 
gine had not come in 1881, and did not for 
some time after. 

During the construction of the boat Holland 
encountered skepticism and ridicule every¬ 
where, especially at the source,—namely, in 
Delamater’s machine shops. Delamater him¬ 
self inquired of the inventor where the boat’s 
probable water line would be. The informa¬ 
tion caused him to shake his head, indicating 


78 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

his belief that the boat when launched would 
promptly sink. Every employe in the firm 
looked for the same result. 

The boat left the shipyard in the presence 
of an assemblage of doubting Thomases, most 
of them the artisans and mechanicians who had 
helped to build her. She was hitched to a steam 
tug and towed across the river to the Gut, just 
north of the New Jersey Central Railroad’s 
ferry, where was a sheet of water little used in 
those days. A wharf was at hand for tying 
up, as well as engine and machine shops in 
case of need. Here the boat lay for several 
months, receiving finishing touches. Holland 
hired a mooring at Bay Ridge, below Owl’s 
Head, where the boat, in the summer of 1881, 
was eventually put through her paces in fa¬ 
vorable surroundings that enabled him to 
come to the surface at any time without risk 
to others or himself. 

During the tests on the New Jersey side, 
Captain Ericsson, designer of the Monitor, of¬ 
fered Holland the use of several projectiles 
with which to try out the air gun. The boat 
was submerged a few feet, and the first shot 
fired. The projectile traveled thirty feet from 
the bow, rose to about forty feet, then came 
down and buried itself in the mud. The second 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 79 

projectile traveled about the same distance, 
cleared the water, went over a breakwater 
bounding the basin, and struck some piling on 
the end of a pier, behind which a man sat fish¬ 
ing. The man was on the right side of the 
pile. Torpedoes don’t behave like that now. 
Later a different type of projectile was fired, 
and carried out its mission of remaining under 
water. 

The boat’s performances were counted a 
success—that is, it registered a marked ad¬ 
vance on the showing of its predecessor. The 
Brayton oil engine helped in part to make the 
boat a practicable submersible, though the 
motor never at any time acquitted itself too 
well. But it justified Holland’s favorable 
opinion of it. The air supply proved to be as 
deficient. The two reservoirs, guaranteed by 
the builders to hold respectively 450 and 500 
pounds to the square inch, did not contain a 
pressure of more than 400 pounds in each, and 
that only for a short period. The tank’s di¬ 
mensions enabled him to run under water for 
not more than two hours at full speed, and then 
the air gauge would show symptoms of decline. 
If Holland pumped up pressure at night he 
could not expect to have enough left to make 
a trip in the morning. Holland, however, was 


80 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

well content with the stage reached. He could 
operate the boat at a speed exceeding seven 
miles an hour on the surface, running awash, 
and at a rate little less when diving, which the 
boat accomplished with dexterous swiftness. 

The inventor and his undersea shell con¬ 
tributed to the gayety of the people on ship and 
shore round and about New York. The news¬ 
papers devoted columns daily to his uncanny 
voyages below the waves. What was he after ? 
He was not maneuvering a toy, but a torpedo 
boat. But no British warship was in sight, 
even in the far offing. There were numerous 
mercantile vessels flying the Union Jack within 
reach, but the newspapers contained no account 
of a mysterious torpedo, fired below the sur¬ 
face, sending one of them to the bottom of the 
sea. People were not prepared for such mari¬ 
time phenomena whisking about under the sur¬ 
face and suddenly bobbing up like some visitant 
from the nether world. Frequently the boat 
would startle the occupants of an excursion 
boat or a tug by emerging like Neptune out of 
the watery deep. Was it a sea serpent, a whale, 
or a sunk derelict strangely endowed with life? 
The opening of the conning tower and the ap¬ 
pearance of Holland's good-natured and beam¬ 
ing Irish face was reassuring. 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 81 

Holland moved about undersea without 
lights. He believed that the darkest water in 
the world lay below New York harbor, though 
I have found the water denser in San Fran¬ 
cisco Bay. Twenty feet under the surface at 
New York it was so muddy that the effect 
suggested the darkness of midnight. Above 
that depth, however, he had clear enough 
vision, the daylight penetrating that far down. 
On the surface or awash his vessel was not 
exempt from being sunk by passing vessels. 
Such sinkings were small matters. The Con¬ 
federate “Davids” thought nothing of them, 
nor did Holland. He or his assistant would 
swim clear, and the boat was later raised un¬ 
injured. 

It went the uneven tenor of its way, like an 
undersea policeman assigned to some strange 
surveillance beyond the comprehension of the 
folks on terra firma. Public curiosity regard¬ 
ing the boat was insatiable. But no inkling of 
its purpose or the objects of its owners could 
be obtained. The newspaper men were balked 
in their quest for information. Their failure 
to induce Holland or his sponsors to let them 
examine the boat doubtless explained the de¬ 
rision with which the boat was always referred 
to in the press. A New York Sun reporter 


82 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

finally did some reasoning of his own after 
Holland refused to permit him to go down in 
her. His conclusions were none too subtle, as 
the motive which animated Holland from the 
first in his pursuit of a practicable submarine 
was no secret. As the machine was evidently 
designed for the destruction of warships, the 
designer, unmistakably Irish, judging by his 
brogue, and as the Fenians just then were 
causing trouble in Ireland, he decided that the 
vessel was intended to blow up the English 
navy. The reporter went further than.that. 
He effected a little coup that made the boat 
famous. He called it the Fenian Ram, and 
the name clung to her forever after. 

Holland was not a Fenian, and avoided par¬ 
ticipating in political activities. This was not 
the case with regard to the men behind him 
who held the purse strings. Their purse was 
the Fenian Skirmishing Fund. The situation 
was not without its comedy. If Holland’s po¬ 
sition can be defined, he was nominally a part¬ 
ner in their project, but actually a subordinate 
agent whom they employed to build and oper¬ 
ate a submarine to their order, and to that end 
worked for them under a retainer. At best 
the Fenian Ram provided them with an outdoor 
sport and cheering imaginings. For Holland 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 83 

its use was more fruitful. It was an argosy 
laden with ideas through which naval tactics 
were to be revolutionized in the days to come. 
The Fenians gained nothing by their outlay, 
but in financing Holland they played an uncon¬ 
scious part in laying the ground for enabling 
others to achieve an aim that was beyond their 
power in 1881. 

The Fenian movement on this side of the 
Atlantic had been braced by the revival of 
disorders in Ireland, which were to culminate 
in 1882 with the murders in Phoenix Park, 
Dublin, of the British Cabinet's Secretary for 
Ireland, Lord Frederick Cavendish, and his 
chief aid, Mr. Burke. The repercussion that 
reached New York created new hopes in 
Irish-American breasts of rendering effective 
assistance to their compatriots at home. No 
prospect was in sight of critical Anglo-Ameri¬ 
can discussions developing into hostilities 
against England that would draw the United 
States into aiding Ireland to obtain her free¬ 
dom. The Fenians reasoned that the Irish 
question would become a vital element in such 
an Anglo-American war. As they saw the 
outlook whenever war clouds lowered over the 
two countries, war would be the signal for a 
revolution in Ireland, and an American army, 


84 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 
reinforced by zealous Hibernians, would in¬ 
vade Canada. The war, they predicted, would 
inevitably end in an American triumph, and 
Irish freedom would be a condition of peace. 

But the chief parties to be considered were 
overlooked. The American and British gov¬ 
ernments knew better. Almost a decade pre¬ 
vious to 1881, a sore issue upon which the 
Fenians relied to bring war—the Alabama 
claims, arising from Confederate raids on 
Union shipping by a British-built privateer— 
had been settled. Popular irritation against 
England over the Alabama was intense enough 
and the Fenians did their part in fomenting it. 

The question is merely academic at this day 
whether the government would have let 
country-wide resentment lead them into a con¬ 
flict with England over the Alabama in the 
chaotic days of Reconstruction following the 
Civil War, to say nothing of whether the Eng¬ 
lish people would sanction such a war rather 
than meet the American demands for the 
Alabama's depredations. In 1872 England 
willingly met these claims, as decided against 
her by the Geneva arbitrators, to the amount 
of $15,000,000. 

The point of interest, as a more or less re¬ 
mote background to the building of the Fenian 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 85 
Ram in 1881, was that the Civil War had 
attracted thousands of Irish-Americans, not 
so much to get into a fight against the Confed¬ 
erates, but to qualify themselves as fighting 
men in a hoped-for conflict with the British. 
O’Donovan Rossa, in his reminiscences wrote 
of visiting, in 1863, a Fenian armory and drill 
room in New York. The men he saw there 
seemed to be soldiers or learning as recruits. 
Many of them, he remarked, had volunteered 
to go into the battlefields of America so that 
they might be able to fight the battles of Ire¬ 
land against England. “I saw this spirit in 
most of the speeches I heard,” he commented. 
After the Civil War these men formed a 
formidable nucleus for an Irish army; thou¬ 
sands had returned to Ireland as trained war¬ 
riors, tested on Southern battlefields, and 
organized secret recruiting. 

After the Civil War, these men, with their 
fighting mettle on edge, were looking for 
trouble. The war was a factor in producing 
the Fenian brotherhood, and but for that 
conflict the movement might never have ob¬ 
tained the headway it did in America. Cer¬ 
tainly the movement of itself would not have 
produced such a trained fighting contingent. 

The Fenians fed upon American dissatis- 


86 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 
faction with official England’s attitude, which 
leaned to the Confederates, and it was the 
Union side, therefore, to which the Fenians 
flocked to gain army experience. Yet it was 
the Union government, after the war, that 
stemmed a movement whose growth it had in¬ 
directly influenced. The demobilized Irish- 
Americans, assisted by Civil War veterans, 
attempted to invade Canada, only to be 
thwarted by American forces, not Canadian. 
Their organization actually decayed, not so 
much by reason of its own lack of coherence, 
as by restraints exercised from Washington. 
Its members were contravening American law 
in plotting against a country with which the 
United States was at peace. 

The month of May, 1870, witnessed a final 
raid into Canada, when again United States 
forces interposed and stopped it. After that 
the movement languished; internal strife 
among the Fenians further contributed to its 
decline. Many of the Irish in America had 
never sanctioned it, nor did the Catholic 
Church. 

In 1871 there appeared some prospect of its 
revival. A number of its most notable cham¬ 
pions, hitherto immured in British prisons, 
among them O’Donovan Rossa, were released, 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 87 
and immediately emigrated, most of them, to 
the United States. Their arrival aroused the 
Fenian brotherhood to a semblance of its old 
enthusiasm. They gathered the scattered 
forces and exchanged fervid addresses with 
their American compatriots, re-echoing Irish 
aspirations and inherited hate of England. 
The refugees would join none of the Fenian 
factions. They rather sought to reunite the 
brotherhood under their own leadership, but in 
this they did not succeed. 

This was the Fenian situation when Holland 
came to the United States in 1872, and it had 
not materially changed in 1881. The Fenian 
Ram's appearance on the scene imparted a 
piquant flavor from the public viewpoint, to 
the movement, but it could not be said that the 
boat revived it. 

The real significance of the Fenian Ram was 
more far reaching than any achievement the 
Fenians could hope to accomplish with it as 
part of their program. An overlooked factor 
in the genesis of modern submarine navigation 
lay in the circumstances under which this odd 
little craft came into being. Holland and his 
Irish associates builded better than they knew. 
Their primary object contemplated the found¬ 
ing of an Irish submarine navy to harass Brit- 


88 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 
ish shipping plying between English ports and 
Canada. Its Utopian impracticality, in view 
of the lack of the efficient modern engine, peri¬ 
scope, and self-acting torpedo, can be passed 
over. What the Fenians actually achieved, all 
unwittingly, was to aid in bringing to the 
plane of practical seamanship an engine of war 
fated in the then dim future to effect by other 
hands the purpose they had at heart by wreck¬ 
ing a havoc upon British naval and mercantile 
shipping beyond their wildest flights of fancy. 

The source of the strength behind Ger¬ 
many’s challenge to Great Britain’s supremacy 
of the seas in the World War could thus be 
traced to Fenian sponsorship of Holland’s 
early experiments. In brief, the Fenians 
fathered the modern submarine in its infancy. 

“Behold!” the surviving Irish compatriots 
of 1881 could say in 1914, “We started this 
thing. Without our funds John P. Holland 
could not have gone ahead.” 

Whatever other inventors in the same field 
might have devised had not Holland been fore¬ 
handed in mastering the science of modern 
navigation, it belongs to the record to say that 
the Irish question produced the modern sub¬ 
marine. 

The Fenian Ram, and a companion boat, a 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 89 
small affair sixteen feet long built on the same 
lines, came to an inglorious end. This nucleus 
of a Fenian navy was stolen under cover of 
darkness. The Fenian Ram was hitched to a 
mooring at Bayonne; the smaller boat lay in 
the stocks, incomplete, without a gasket at its 
turret and without an engine, being designed 
for propulsion by the occupant using hands 
and feet to operate the propeller. There had 
been dissensions among the Fenians, and a 
faction decided that the development of their 
scheme would better proceed if the boats were 
taken from Holland’s hands. A night come 
toward the close of 1882 when a tug bore down 
on the mooring place and obtained possession 
from the watchman of both boats by a forged 
order. The boats, lashed to the tug, both 
floating on the water, were towed out into the 
darkness. The tug headed for Long Island 
Sound, where the smaller boat broke from her 
lashings and sank in 110 feet of water. At¬ 
tempts to recover her by dragging failed. The 
Fenian Ram was taken to the suburbs of New 
Haven, Connecticut. There the kidnappers 
discovered that they had a white elephant on 
their hands; none of them knew how to man¬ 
age her. She was hauled ashore and a shed 
built for her near a brass factory. 


1 


90 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

“Fll let her rot on their hands,” Holland 
decided, on learning of the theft. 

The engine was removed and utilized in the 
factory. The hull, I believe, still lies in its old 
shed, covered with dust and kindling wood. 
But the Fenian Ram, if it did not serve its 
owners’ purpose, more than justified its exist¬ 
ence. 

The stealing of the boats ended Holland’s 
experiments for several years. No more sup¬ 
port could be looked for from the dissolved 
group of patriots. He took up other employ¬ 
ment and spent his leisure in planning another 
boat. 


CHAPTER VII 


Naval attitude to Holland’s device.—The Zalinski 
boat and its fate.—Setback for inventor.—Government 
competitions for submarine bids initiated by Secretary 
Whitney.— Submarine progress at home and abroad. 
—French enterprise.—Secretary Herbert shudders at 
dangers of submarines.—Test of effect of gun-cotton 
explosions on water-tight. tank containing a cat, 
rooster, rabbit and dove, to show submarines are safe 
from their own projectiles.—Further competition for 
submarine construction follows.—Simon Lake’s Argo¬ 
naut type.—Holland secures contract to build the first 
American naval submarine.—The ill-starred Plunger. 
—Inventor’s conflict with red tape and gold lace.— 
Congressional committee hears naval experts on sub¬ 
marine outlook.—A step forward. 


The Navy Department had looked on dis¬ 
tantly at the diversions of the Fenian Ram in 
New York waters. Officially it gave the boat 
no cognizance; an inventor was merely pros¬ 
pecting in an unexplored and hazardous field. 
But among the navy personnel, as well as the 
army, Holland’s experiments made a lasting 
impression. A nucleus of unofficial naval sup¬ 
port in his invention developed and buttressed 
his wavering faith. His adherents included 
Captain (later Admiral) George H. Converse, 
one of the foremost ordnance experts in the 
navy, and Lieutenant-Commander (later Ad¬ 
miral) W. W. Kimball, who commanded the 


92 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

torpedo-boat flotilla in the Spanish-American 
War. But it was from the army, in the person 
of Lieutenant Edward Zalinski of the Fifth 
U. S. Artillery, a notable inventor of military 
devices, whence Holland was to receive the 
next impetus to proceed. 

The outcQme was what became known as the 
Zalinski boat. This was a working model of 
the utility of the inventor’s ideas. Zalinski 
the future Holland, which determined finally 
became drawn to Holland’s device by a like 
enthusiasm for delving into uncharted seas in 
search of the attainable. At the time he was 
devoted to the development of his pneumatic 
dynamite torpedo gun which threw a heavy 
charge of high explosives some 5,000 yards by 
compressed air. Torpedo guns came very 
materially into Holland’s field. There was 
thus a common line of approach in the minds 
of the two men. Zalinski also bent his in¬ 
ventive aptitude in devising an intrenching 
tool, a ramrod bayonet, a telescopic sight for 
artillery, and a system of range and position 
finding for seacoast and artillery fixing. 

Zalinski, in 1886, organized a company for 
Holland, who thereupon built an experimental 
boat on wooden sheathing held on an iron 
frame, propelled by petroleum, and equipped 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 93 
with an automatic apparatus, employed for 
the first time, in steering a straight course. 
Her length exceeded 50 feet; her diameter was 
8 feet. For air reservoirs she had steel tubes 
about 14 inches in diameter and 20 feet long, 
eight on each side. Holland’s submarines 
were thus growing in length and equipment, as 
well as in other respects. The chief object in 
building her, like the requirement of his first 
sponsors, was to satisfy the stockholders that 
it was possible to navigate a vessel under 
water. The Fenian Ram's ability to operate 
successfully 37 feet under sea counted for 
nothing. 

As an offensive weapon the Zalinski boat 
was equipped with novel devices, though they 
are now familiar enough. It had a pneumatic 
gun for firing large dynamite charges. It was 
designed to approach readily within a mile of 
an enemy, with only its small conning tower 
awash, afterward sinking below the surface 
and able to observe what was transpiring 
above the water through a camera tube, which 
served as a periscope. Within striking dis¬ 
tance it was planned for the bow, from which 
the gun muzzle protruded, to be brought above 
the surface and a shell sent through the air. 
The boat would then submerge, both by the 


94 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

recoil and the action of the engines, to take up 
another position for renewing its attacks. 
More than that, it had apparatus to enable it 
to pass underneath an enemy ship and auto¬ 
matically attach a torpedo to her bottom, to 
explode when the boat was at a safe distance. 
In this latter device the stage reached was not 
beyond the methods of Bushnell and the Con¬ 
federate “Davids,” but in other respects it 
embodied a range of possibilities which future 
submarines were to realize. In those days it 
was viewed as a floating gun carriage. 

Naval interest was more than ever attracted 
by the Zalinski enterprise, but the boat proved 
a misadventure from the start. There were 
difficulties of construction, due to Zalinski’s 
overzeal. The boat was built on what used to 
be the parade ground of old Fort Lafayette. 
From the dock there she was launched down 
the runway by a naval officer whose assistance 
Zalinski thought he needed, but who knew 
little about the matter. The boat struck a spile 
in the runway, gradually filled, and sank. She 
was raised and turned keel up to get the water 
out of her tubes and other equipment, but she 
was injured beyond repair. Her speed on the 
surface never exceeded four miles an hour, 
and her engine—a second-hand Brayton de- 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 95 
vice—was too small. Zalinski vainly spent 
much of his own means to make the boat per¬ 
form according to specifications. 

Thereafter little was heard of Holland pub¬ 
licly for several years. The Zalinski enter¬ 
prise added to the discouraging vicissitudes he 
had already undergone, and he despaired of 
making any real progress. The following 
year, however, the group of naval men who 
believed in submarine navigation induced 
Admiral Sicord, then chief of the Ordnance 
Bureau, to prevail upon President Cleveland’s 
Secretary of the Navy to obtain an appropria¬ 
tion for constructing a submarine boat for the 
government. The Secretary was William C. 
Whitney, who accomplished much in develop¬ 
ing plans for improving the naval service. The 
American navy of later days owed much of 
the world-wide importance it attained to his 
progressive policy. He was attracted to the 
submersible as a potential naval arm, obtained 
an appropriation of $150,000 and in 1888 in¬ 
vited all comers to submit bids. 

The competition drew attention to the prog¬ 
ress of other submarine inventors, native and 
foreign. Among the competitors, besides Hol¬ 
land, were Professor Josiah Tuck, an Ameri¬ 
can inventor, and T. V. Nordenfeldt of 


96 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

Sweden. The Tuck device, known as the 
Peacemaker, dated from 1885 and had sur¬ 
vived several short trips on the Hudson River. 
It was propelled by an ordinary steam engine. 
Caustic soda was introduced into the boiler to 
generate steam. Its mode of attack was by 
means of a torpedo fastened to the bottom or 
side of an enemy ship by magnets, or held 
there by buoys rising under the keel. A water 
lock was provided through which a man, clad 
in a diving suit, could pass to lay the mine. 
Jules Verne applied this principle of egress 
under water to his fanciful Nautilus . The 
length of time the Peacemaker could run, 
either on the surface or submerged, was lim¬ 
ited, and it never advanced beyond the experi¬ 
mental stage. 

Nordenfeldt’s submarine of this period, 
devised in association with G. W. Garrett, an 
English inventor, was of more account. Im¬ 
proved boats of the type were built for Turkey, 
Greece, and Russia. An ordinary steam en¬ 
gine operated it; when submerged, the steam 
was obtained from hot-water tanks, in which 
it was stored at a pressure of 150 pounds. The 
boat of early design was built of steel, had a 
length of 64 feet, a diameter of 9 feet and a 
displacement of 60 tons. Later, the type de- 


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OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 97 
veloped into large vessels with an extensive 
radius. Vertical screws on each side, placed 
amidships, were used by a separate engine to 
submerge the boat. A constant horizontal 
position was maintained by means of horizon¬ 
tal balanced rudders connected with a weighted 
pendulum hanging in a tank of oil and water. 
The boat of the ’eighties was calculated to 
withstand a pressure of only 50 feet; hence it 
was certain to collapse at a depth of 100 feet. 
Twelve hours were necessary to store up suf¬ 
ficient pressure in the hot-water reservoirs to 
prepare the boat for a trip under water; 
arranging for submerging took from twenty 
minutes to half an hour. The speed attained 
on the surface was six knots; submerged, only 
two or three knots were made. A surface run 
of 150 miles was effected without recoaling, 
but under water the longest run did not ex¬ 
ceed 500 yards. The boat contained no air¬ 
cleansing equipment nor carried compressed 
air for breathing purposes. A cradle was 
provided on the outside to carry movable tor¬ 
pedoes. When submerged the boat was visi¬ 
ble from the mast of a gunboat throughout its 
course, but this fact was attributed to its light 
color and nearness to the surface. 

France had entered the submarine field with 


98 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 
the Gymnote, invented by Gustave Zede. It 
was submerged by water-tight compartments 
filled till its buoyancy was greatly reduced, and 
then made to dive by means of horizontal rud¬ 
ders. It attained a speed of ten knots, and 
was the forerunner of a much more ambitious 
craft, of the same general design, the Gustave 
Zede . 

Another French pioneer, Goubet, was also 
active about this period, with government sup¬ 
port. The French, in fact, were more recep¬ 
tive to the possibilities of submarine naviga¬ 
tion than any other nation. The Goubet type 
were small and light, the original pattern 
weighing under one and one-half tons, and 
were driven by electric motors, the power 
stored in accumulators, or propelled by hand 
at the rate of about five knots. The torpedo 
was attachable to a ship’s bottom by means of 
a rubber disk, serving as a “sucker.” Russia 
in 1881 was credited with having ordered no 
less than three hundred boats of the Goubet 
type, but if delivered they vanished from the 
Russian navy before the twentieth century 
began; at least, nothing was ever heard of 
them. Later Goubet developed his devices, 
one new feature being a propellor which 
worked on a universal joint, so that it could be 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 99 
changed as to the direction of thrust. Two he 
constructed for Brazil weighed ten tons and 
had an arrangement of prisms and lenses for 
sighting projected from the surface. 

Spain had the Peral, an ambitious contriv¬ 
ance over 70 feet long and displacing 87 tons, 
electrically driven. It sank hulks with great 
success, but failed to realize expectations, and 
later lay at Cadiz, a rusty mass of iron. 

The American offer of bids enlightened the 
navy regarding the stage submarine naviga¬ 
tion had reached both in the United States and 
abroad, but, owing to an informality in the 
bids, all were thrown out. The following year 
(1889) another competition resulted in Hol¬ 
land’s design being chosen. But the year 
marked the close of the first Cleveland ad¬ 
ministration. The new Secretary of the 
Navy, General Tracy, who displaced Secretary 
Whitney, did not take any further action, and 
the submarine appropriation was diverted to 
other uses. 

Holland became more than ever discouraged 
by the shelving of his plans through the 
change of administration. But for the per¬ 
suasion of Lieutenant Kimball, he would have 
abandoned the submarine field. 

Congress discovered the subject in Cleve- 


100 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

land’s second administration (1893-97). Sub¬ 
marine invention was moving abroad and the 
question could no longer be disregarded. The 
American navy was pitiably weak; relations 
were also strained between the United States 
and Great Britain over the Venezuelan bound¬ 
ary dispute. The Naval Committees of both 
houses examined the question exhaustively 
and determined to appropriate $200,000 for 
experimental submarine construction. 

Cleveland’s Secretary of the Navy, Hilary 
Abner Herbert, had shuddered at the idea of 
submarines before he could be prevailed upon 
to act on the appropriation. He held that they 
would be death traps for anyone who went 
down in them. Apparently mindful only of 
what befell the Huxley in the Civil War, he 
feared that they would be hoist with their own 
petard, in that a torpedo from one would de¬ 
stroy the assailant as well as the assailed. 

He was finally induced to sanction an ex¬ 
periment—the first test of under water craft 
under the auspices of the American navy. 
It was a crude affair. The question to be de¬ 
termined was whether any floatable submerged 
vessel and those in it would be in danger of 
destruction from the recoil of an explosion, 
say from a torpedo it discharged at an enemy. 










OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 101 
A small craft—nothing more than a water¬ 
tight tank—was put under water, containing 
a quartet of very bewildered passengers— 
namely, a cat, a rooster, a rabbit, and a dove. 
At a considerable distance from it a charge of 
guncotton was exploded. The experiment was 
repeated several times, the tank being moved 
nearer to the guncotton with each explosion. 
At the final demonstration the tank was less 
than one hundred feet from the guncotton. 
Then the craft was brought ashore and found 
to be undamaged. The rabbit and the dove 
were dead, but the cat and the rooster ap¬ 
peared none the worse for their confinement. 
The cat fled, highly incensed, with distended 
tail; the rooster flew out and crowed. Mr. 
Herbert was thereupon assured that subma¬ 
rines need not be their own destroyers. 

The result was another contest for bids in 
1895. It attracted eight designs, among them, 
in addition to those of Holland, Tuck, and 
Nordenfeldt, one by Simon Lake and one by 
George C. Baker, an American inventor who 
had successfully launched a submarine device 
for experimental purposes on Lake Michigan. 

About this time Simon Lake had entered the 
field with his Argonaut type, an undersea craft 
designed for peaceful purposes which the gov- 


102 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

eminent had under consideration for some 
years. Lake stressed its great value in laying 
submarine foundations, recovering sunken 
treasure from the ocean bed, and from sea- 
coast and river bottoms, submarine wrecking, 
and for scientific purposes. It was designed 
to roll on wheels along the sea bed like a loco¬ 
motive. The vessel was operated by steam on 
the surface, and by an electric motor under 
water. Lake departed from this type and built 
war submarines. 

Holland obtained the award for building 
the first American navy submarine at the 
price of $150,000. This was the Plunger. A 
company, the J. P. Holland Submarine Boat 
Company, had been formed to construct it. 
Now began a conflict with the official mind 
which the inventor had to endure for many 
years. Numerous difficulties confronted him 
from the start. The Navy Department re¬ 
quired that every item be first submitted to its 
experts for approval. The building of the 
Plunger consequently proceeded at a snail's 
pace, subjected to manifold changes devised 
by naval technicians. The outcome was a boat 
that departed far from the ideas over which 
Holland had labored. It was “improved” to 
such an extent that it failed. Holland was ill 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 103 

during much of the time the vessel was on the 
stocks, and his absence gave the naval techni¬ 
cians their opportunity. 

The boat was to be triple screw, propelled 
by steam and installed with one 300 h. p. and 
two 600 h. p. engines. One of the trial re¬ 
quirements was that she should run at full 
speed on the surface with boilers developing 
1,500 h. p. The limit of time given from the 
instant her engine-room telegraph was set at 
“stop” until her funnel was hauled down, 
hatches closed, and boat fully submerged, was 
not to exceed one minute. One could imagine 
what would happen to a crew of men sealed up 
in an air-tight case with a boiler that a few 
seconds before had been developing 1,500 h. p. 
The naval experts did not insulate their fire 
boxes, and, as a result, no human being could 
stay inside with the hatches closed, so intense 
was the heat. 

The boat tardily reached completion in 1897 
and had abortive dock trials. She presented 
the appearance of a gigantic torpedo, extend¬ 
ing 85 feet in length, almost 12 feet in di¬ 
ameter, and displaced 168 tons. For arma¬ 
ment she had two submerged torpedo tubes 
and a supply of five Whitehead torpedoes. At 
full speed awash she was depended on to 


104 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

endure a twelve-hour run, and at slow speed 
a radius of 1,000 miles. She never got beyond 
her dock at the Columbian Iron Works, Balti¬ 
more, where she was built, except for her final 
disposal to the little town of New Suffolk, 
Long Island. There her hull lay until the 
World War, when she was removed to New 
London, Connecticut, and used for the train¬ 
ing of divers by the navy. 

Holland foresaw the failure of the Plunger 
long before it was completed. He proposed to 
his company that he be permitted to construct 
another boat based entirely on his own plans 
and under his own supervision, and he would 
abide by the result, whether success or failure. 
The company perceived the need of proceeding 
with their project according to Holland’s 
ideas, unhampered by captious and ill-digested 
naval orders, as well as delays incidental to 
the construction of such a novel craft under 
government control. Their purpose was to 
hasten results and to produce a trustworthy 
model upon which future contracts could be 
made. This second boat, the famous Holland, 
was built at the company’s own expense. The 
cost, however, was sensibly lessened by a gift 
of $25,000 made by a wealthy New York 
woman. 



SKETCH OF ARMORED SUBMARINE TORPEDO BOAT DESIGNED BY JOHN P. HOLLAND, 1894. AT THAT TIME SUBMA¬ 
RINES WERE HARDLY THOUGHT OF. NOTE FORESIGHT OF MR. HOLLAND IN DESIGNING THIS BOAT. AT THE 
TIME THIS PLAN WAS DRAWN HOLLAND’S ASSOCIATES CONSIDERED IT WHOLLY VISIONARY AND IT WAS NOT 
UNTIL I917 UNDER PRESSURE OF THE GREAT WAR THAT CONSTRUCTION OF THIS TYPE WAS UNDERTAKEN. 





















































































































































































































































































OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 105 

Years later Holland spoke feelingly to an 
interviewer of his experiences with the official 
mind. 

“Why do you come to me?” he demanded. 

“Because you, if anyone,” the interviewer 
answered, “should be an authority on the sub¬ 
ject.” 

The interviewer recorded that Holland 
smiled grimly. Behind the smile lay bitter¬ 
ness, recollections of his struggles to get his 
ideas adopted by the Navy Department, his 
many heart-burnings as one board after an¬ 
other sat upon his plans, and sat upon them in 
more senses than one. The inventor had 
realized the dictionary definition of a board—a 
thing “long, narrow, and wooden.” 

“So you have sought me as an authority on 
submarines?” Holland mused. “Go down to 
Washington, and you will find plenty of peo¬ 
ple there who will tell you I know nothing 
about the subject, nothing at all.” 

This was not strictly correct. Holland had 
stanch naval supporters, but they could not 
overcome the bureaucratic inertia and impedi¬ 
ments that beset the inventor’s path. Several 
voiced their belief in his work before the 
Senate Naval Committee, which in 1896 gave 
renewed attention to the subject without wait- 


106 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 
ing for the completion of the Plunger. The 
Senators held long sessions and heard ex¬ 
haustive testimony from naval officers. 

The view of Captain (later Admiral) A. T. 
Mahan stood out as a headlight among their 
opinions. 

“In our present unprotected condition,” he 
wrote, “the risk of losing the money by the 
government by reason of the boat's (Holland 
type) being a failure is more than counterbal¬ 
anced by the great protection the boat would 
be if a substantial success.” 

The Senate committee wanted to be shown, 
and was shown. In these days, when the sub¬ 
marine has more than fulfilled all the predic¬ 
tions made for it as a war weapon, the evi¬ 
dence they heard has an ancient savor, but it 
was needed to prevail on Congress to make 
further provision for such a naval innovation. 

“If I commanded a squadron,” said Rear- 
Admiral Jouett, “that was blockading a port, 
and the enemy had half a dozen of these Hol¬ 
land submarine boats, I would be compelled to 
abandon the blockade and put to sea to avoid 
destruction of my ships from an invisible 
source, from which I could not defend myself.” 

“Give me six Holland submarine boats,” de¬ 
clared Lieutenant-Commander Kimball, “the 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 107 

officers and crew to be selected by me, and I 
will pledge my life to stand off the entire 
British squadron ten miles from Sandy Hook 
without any aid from our fleet.” 

“A fleet of such boats should be added to 
our navy without delay,” urged Lieutenant 
Nixon, the designer of the battleships Indiana 
and Massachusetts, “in order that the neces¬ 
sary experience may be had in their handling.” 

Congress was cautious. As an outcome of 
the Senate hearings it authorized the Secre¬ 
tary of the Navy to contract for the building 
of two further Holland boats at a cost of 
$175,000 each, provided that the Plunger, then 
under construction, fulfilled requirements. But 
no action was to be taken until the Plunger 
was fully tested and accepted. 

Holland, as indicated, had despaired of the 
Plunger, upon the success of which appeared 
to depend further government support. He had 
the foresight to perceive that the authorities 
would recognize the Holland as a sounder cri¬ 
terion on which to stake the navy's chances of 
getting a submarine fleet. Accordingly, the 
inventor bent his efforts toward making his 
second boat acquit herself according to specifi¬ 
cations. Fortunately, the Holland was built 
away from red tape and gold lace. 


CHAPTER VIII 


The famous Holland and the beginning of my asso¬ 
ciation with its inventor.—The new boat as the parent 
of most modern submarines.—Her features and capaci¬ 
ties.—Beginning of real under-water navigation in 
America. 

My association with Holland dated from 
this period. I was living in Philadelphia at 
the time as a technician connected with the 
Electro-Dynamic Company of that city. My 
first acquaintance with the Holland was made 
through reading a graphic newspaper account 
of her remarkable features, as they were then 
regarded. It reminded me of Jules Verne’s 
Nautilus; one seemed as real as the other. I 
was asked if I would care to take an undersea 
trip in the Holland, and my answer was that 
not for anything would I be tempted to do so. 
Yet it fell out that in less than six months I 
found myself in command of this boat, and for 
twelve years afterward I spent more time un¬ 
der water than on the surface. 

I became the skipper of the Holland 
through being the accidental means of recon¬ 
ditioning her electrical equipment after she 
had sunk, when near completion, at the 
Crescent shipyard, Elizabethport, New Jersey, 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 109 
then owned by Lewis Nixon. One night, when 
the boat was lying alongside dock, undergoing 
minor changes, a careless workman left a 
small valve open. In the night the boat filled 
and sank. She remained submerged for about 
eighteen hours, during which her electrical 
equipment and machinery were at the mercy 
of salt water. At that time motors and gen¬ 
erators were not protected from the injurious 
effect of contact with salt water as they are 
to-day. The insulation was ruined, and some 
means had to be found to restore it. To 
remove the electrical equipment and rebuild 
the boat meant a large outlay, as the entire 
upper part of the hull would have to be raised 
in order to take out the machinery. The Hol¬ 
land Company vainly tried every known 
method of drying out the motors and gen¬ 
erators by applying heat externally. As a last 
resort the Electro-Dynamic Company was 
notified, and sent me to investigate. After an 
examination I decided that there was only one 
way of remedying the trouble, and if this 
course was adopted there was a chance of re¬ 
storing the boat. The Holland Company as¬ 
sumed all responsibility, the work was started, 
and in four days completed and the job pro¬ 
nounced satisfactory. 


110 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

The Holland was regarded as the most im¬ 
portant contribution to naval science so far 
devised. The submarine problem, which had 
beset experts for a century, had at last come 
within the field of practical and successful 
application. We wonder at the perfection the 
submersible has reached to-day, but it was the 
result of the labors of inventors wrestling with 
the idea long before the time of Bushnell and 
Fulton. Holland picked up the threads which 
others had lost or could not grasp. Thus sub¬ 
marine navigation was no longer the inef¬ 
fective pursuit of cranks who had not mas¬ 
tered its fundamentals. 

No longer a fad or a toy, the submarine be¬ 
came, in the shape of the Holland, a “monster 
war fish,” a “devil of the deep,” a “hell diver,” 
as the vessel came to be called. Strictly speak¬ 
ing, the boat was a torpedo, but a torpedo 
controlled in all its workings by human agency 
inside the craft, instead of being automatic in 
its operations. The ordinary torpedo, by an 
arrangement of springs to counteract the 
water pressure, was made to go through the 
water at any depth. It had to follow a path 
fixed for it beforehand. When it had run its 
course it came to the surface or sank, in ac¬ 
cordance with a predetermined plan. The men 
inside the Holland controlled her at will. 



SECTIONS SHOWING GENERAL ARRANGEMENT PLAN OF ORIGINAL HOLLAND SUBMARINE 







































































































































































































































OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 111 

As Lieutenant-Commander Kimball put it 
before the Society of Naval Architects, thou¬ 
sands of submarine boats were actually in use 
in all parts of the world in the shape of auto¬ 
mobile torpedoes, which were nothing more or 
less than automobile submersibles. The only 
difference in principle was that an actual sub¬ 
marine had a controlling brain, while directing 
automata motivated the torpedo. 

The Holland was 53 feet long, and at her 
widest part 10^4 feet in diameter. She had a 
displacement of 74 tons. Her frames were 
exact circles of steel set a little more than a 
foot apart. They diminished gradually in 
diameter from the center of the boat to the 
bow and stern. On top of the boat was a flat 
superstructure to afford a walking platform, 
and under this were spaces for exhaust pipes 
and for the external outfit of the boat, such as 
ropes and a small anchor. 

A turret extended upward through the 
superstructure about eighteen inches. It was 
only about two feet in diameter and afforded 
the only means of entrance. It was also the 
one place from which the boat could be oper¬ 
ated. At the stern was an ordinary three- 
bladed propeller and an ordinary rudder; in 
addition there were two horizontal rudders— 


112 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 
“diving rudders” they were called—which 
looked like the feet of a duck spread out be¬ 
hind as it swam along the water. 

The boat was propelled on the surface by a 
gasoline engine, and under water by electric¬ 
ity. Holland encountered the usual difficulty 
in obtaining the right engine; he almost de¬ 
spaired of finding one. The internal-combus¬ 
tion gasoline engine giving large power with 
small space and weight had just been 
developed, and large storage batteries with 
corresponding electric motors were available. 
Chance, took the inventor to an electrical 
exhibition at Madison Square Garden, where 
he noticed the exhibit of an electric-light plant 
designed for a country home. The generator 
was driven by a 50 h. p. Otto gasoline engine. 
“That is what I want for my boat!” he ex¬ 
claimed. He promptly bought the engine and 
installed it on the Holland. But for the de¬ 
velopment of the gasoline engine, the subma¬ 
rine might never have passed beyond the 
experimental stage. 

From the bow two-thirds of the way to the 
stern was a flooring, beneath which were the 
storage batteries, the tank for the gasoline, 
and the tanks filled with water to submerge the 
boat. Holland specially showed his genius in 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 113 
his ballast tanks. In later boats he greatly 
improved their operation. No submarine 
could be counted a success which did not fol¬ 
low the lines of tank construction that he later 
devised. In earlier submarines the tanks were 
constructed without subdivision, large enough 
to hold the required maximum of water, and 
consequently were rarely totally filled. Hence 
this water flowed freely from one end of the 
tank to the other as the boat’s angle changed. 
This prevented the boat from preserving a 
proper trim. Holland realized this defect, and 
laid down the rule that the main storage tanks 
should be of such a capacity that when entirely 
filled the boat would be brought to the awash 
condition only, and that the final adjusting of 
the buoyancy of the boat must be made by the 
use of a small tank with only a small free¬ 
water surface if not entirely filled. So the 
main ballast tanks were entirely empty or 
completely filled. 

There were about a dozen openings in the 
boat, the chief of them three Kingston valves, 
by means of which the submerging tanks were 
filled or emptied. Others admitted water to 
pressure gauges, which regulated or showed 
the depth of the vessel under water. There 
were twelve deadlights in the top and sides of 


114 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 
the craft. To remain under water the boat 
had to be kept in motion unless an anchor was 
used. There was always a reserve buoyancy 
which tended to bring it to the surface. 

It could be steered to the surface by the 
diving rudders, or set flying to the top by 
emptying the storage tanks. If it struck bot¬ 
tom, or became stuck in the mud, it could blow 
itself loose by means of its compressed air. It 
could not be sunk unless pierced above the 
flooring. It had a speed of seven knots on the 
surface and five knots submerged. 

It could go 1,500 miles on the surface with¬ 
out renewing its supply of gasoline, and fully 
forty knots under water without coming up. 
There was enough compressed air in the tanks 
to supply a crew with fresh air for thirty 
hours, if the air was not used for any other 
purpose, such as emptying the submerging 
tanks. It could dive to a depth of twenty feet 
in eight seconds. It could stay at sea, under an 
emergency, for a week. 

There were no periscopes in those days. 
The ingenious French, who were to devise this 
valuable eye for the submarine, had not yet 
developed it from the sighting contrivance of 
prisms and lenses which Goubet used about 
this period. The Holland consequently had to 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 115 
be handled by porpoising. This was a simple 
resort to the movements of the porpoise, which 
the inventor took as his model for diving. In 
porpoising the boat ran a short distance sub¬ 
merged and then came to the surface far 
enough to expose the conning tower, thus get¬ 
ting a chance to look round, and then diving. 
This bobbing up and disappearing was swiftly 
effected; the boat would rise to the surface 
from a depth, say, of thirty feet, focus on an 
imaginary target, if such was the occasion for 
the maneuver, fire its torpedo, and be quickly 
under water again < 

With the turret clamped down before sub¬ 
merging, the operator looked through little 
plate-glass windows, about an inch wide and 
three inches long, which encircled the turret. 
These windows were valuable while the boat 
was running on the surface; they gave a com¬ 
plete view of the surroundings if the water 
was smooth. But once under water, the win¬ 
dows were useless; it was impossible to see 
through the water. Steering had to be done 
by compass—until recently considered an im¬ 
possible task in a submarine boat A tiny 
electric light in the turret showed the operator 
his direction and revealed the markings on the 
depth gauges. If the boat passed under an 


116 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

object, such as a ship, a perceptible shadow 
would be noticed through the deadlights, but 
that was all. The ability to see fishes swim¬ 
ming about in the water is a pleasant fiction. 

The only clear space in the body of the boat 
was directly in front of the bench on which 
stood the operator in the turret. It was where 
the eighteen-inch torpedo tube was loaded. 

Along the sides of this open space were six 
compressed tanks, containing thirty cubic feet 
of air, at a pressure of 2,000 pounds to the 
square inch. Near by was a smaller tank, 
containing three cubic feet of air, at a fifty- 
pound pressure. A still smaller tank contained 
two cubic feet of air, at a ten-pound pressure. 
These smaller tanks supplied the compressed 
air which, with the smokeless powder, was 
used in discharging the projectiles from the 
boat. 

The machinery was packed away closely be¬ 
hind the turret. Against the roof on the port 
side was the little engine which steered the 
vessel by compressed air. On the starboard 
side was the diving engine, fastened on the 
roof with disks that looked as large as dinner 
plates standing on edge at each end. These 
disks were diaphragms on which the water 
pressure exerted an influence, counteracting 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 117 

certain springs which were set to keep the 
diving rudders at a given pitch, thus insuring 
an immersion of an exact depth during a run. 

At one side was a cubic steel box—the air 
compressor; and directly in the center of this 
part of the boat, a long pendulum, as in the 
ordinary torpedo, swung backward and for¬ 
ward as the boat dived or rose, checking a 
tendency to go too far down or come up at too 
sharp an angle. On the floor were the levers 
which, when raised and moved in certain di¬ 
rections, filled or emptied the submerging 
tanks. 

There were also pumps in the boat, a venti¬ 
lating apparatus, and a sounding contrivance, 
by means of which the channel was picked out 
when running under water. This sounding 
contrivance consisted of a heavy weight at¬ 
tached to a piano wire passing from a reel out 
through a stuffing box in the bottom of the boat. 
There were also valves which released fresh 
air to the crew when necessary in long runs. 

This was the craft whose performances 
were to attract the eyes of the world and earn 
for her the credit of being the first submarine 
boat to achieve real success, to the extent to 
which practicable under-water navigation was 
then understood. 


CHAPTER IX 


The Holland as another suspicious craft.—Pending 
war with Spain makes navy authorities watchful of 
her movements.—Spanish warship in New York harbor 
in alleged danger of being torpedoed by a wooden pro¬ 
jectile from the Holland's gun.—Blind search of the 
elusive submarine by a navy tug.—Difficulties of navi¬ 
gation in New York harbor.—Navy officially recog¬ 
nizes the Holland and submits her to tests.—Dubious 
of her performance.—Changes in operation.—Crudities 
of equipment. 


Early in 1898 the Holland, virtually com¬ 
pleted, was moved from her Elizabethport 
shipyard to Perth Amboy, New Jersey. The 
journey was merely a change of location to 
enable her to undergo preliminary dives by 
way of feeling out her mechanism. But the 
Navy Department attached a dark significance 
to her movements. The Holland was not a 
government boat and the department had had 
no hand in her construction. She was pro¬ 
duced, as it were, beyond the pale of official 
recognition. Despite congressional provision 
for submarine construction, the department’s 
bureaucratic mind remained coldly skeptical as 
to the practical outcome of the projected out¬ 
lay. The luckless Plunger had failed because 
of her enormous steam installation and her 
lack of stability. Why not the Holland, too, 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 119 

if not through these defects, at any rate from 
others she would be bound to reveal? Out¬ 
wardly the Navy Department declined to admit 
that the Holland was a war vessel; it would 
not concede that the boat promised to be of 
service. Nevertheless, the department’s action 
belied its attitude; it nervously watched the 
Holland . 

War with Spain was in immediate prospect. 
Foretokens of that brief conflict were manifest 
in a rising hostile sentiment against Spain be¬ 
cause of the desperate repressive measures to 
which she had resorted in the hopeless at¬ 
tempts to subjugate the Cubans. The U. S. S. 
Maine was at Havana, whither she had been 
sent to safeguard American interests from 
supposed danger through military riots which 
broke out in that city. As an offset to the 
Maine's presence off Havana, the Spanish war¬ 
ship Vizcaya had been sent to New York, and 
was now anchored in the harbor. 

The Navy Department decided that the Hol¬ 
land had designs on the Vizcaya. It wired an 
order to the commandant of the New York 
Navy Yard, Admiral Bunce, to watch the ves¬ 
sel and, if necessary, seize her. The Holland 
had in her bow an eight-inch dynamite gun. 
Just before leaving Elizabethport several 


120 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

wooden projectiles were made to fit this gun, 
which, at a distance, resembled the real thing. 
These projectiles were on board. Several 
hours after we had left Elizabethport for 
Perth Amboy a tug from the navy yard ap¬ 
peared, looking for us. Some workmen in the 
shipyard informed the tug’s captain that we 
were loaded with dynamite shells and had gone 
down the river. This information, coming on 
top of the instructions from Washington, 
started the tug in hot pursuit. 

Meantime we had reached Perth Amboy 
and had tied up out of sight in a basin behind 
an old canal boat. The navy’s tug passed 
without a suspicion of our presence. After 
cruising all day in a blind search for us, the tug 
returned to the navy yard and reported its 
failure, also, no doubt, that the Vizcaya was 
unharmed. It was several days before we 
were located. 

Numerous changes in the boat’s mechanism 
were found necessary before we made our first 
test. The dive took place on St. Patrick’s Day 
(March 17), 1898, and ended in a mud bank 
near Tottenville, Staten Island. Due to some 
error in the compass, the navigator lost his 
bearings and the mud bank stopped his erratic 
movements. Owing to the slow speed, no 



SUBMARINE “HOLLAND” ALONGSIDE DOCK. NOTE OUR FIRST WORKSHOP 





























































































. 












































OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 121 

damage was done, and the boat returned to her 
moorings none the worse. But enough had 
been accomplished to demonstrate the possi¬ 
bilities of boats of this type. 

In the early days of submarines the compass 
was one of our most troublesome instruments. 
Space in our conning tower was limited and we 
could not use a compass with a card of more 
than two inches in diameter. Even such an 
imperfect guide might have sufficed had it not 
been necessary to place it within a few inches 
of the steel hull. Owing to its close proximity 
to the steel, we were obliged to have it heavily 
compensated with permanent magnets. Ac¬ 
cordingly, we had an instrument which was 
very sluggish and not at all accurate. The 
boat might take a sudden sheer and deviate a 
considerable distance off the course before the 
compass would register the change. 

We took serious risks in cruising under 
lower New York Bay. Once the skipper of a 
lumber schooner called on Holland at his New 
York office. The inventor remembered that in 
diving the previous day he had almost collided 
with such a craft, but, seeing his danger, had 
dropped fifteen or twenty feet to clear her. 

“I am the captain of that lumber schooner,” 
his visitor announced. “Your boat dived under 


122 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 
my craft as I came up the Narrows and struck 
her bottom, seriously damaging the copper 
sheathing, and Fve come to collect damages/’ 

“If such a thing were so,” retorted Holland, 
“your copper bottom would have ripped off the 
top of my conning tower and I would not have 
been here to talk to you now.” 

The Navy Department took official cog¬ 
nizance of the Holland shortly after she was 
launched. The officer assigned to inspect her, 
Lieutenant Sargent, reported that the boat had 
“fully proved her ability to propel herself, to 
dive, come up, admit water to her ballast tanks, 
and to eject it again without difficulty.” The 
Holland, he added, appeared to him to be more 
efficient than he imagined her to be before 
making the inspection, and promised to be an 
ultimate success. 

Trials followed in Prince’s Bay, Staten 
Island, before a special board appointed by the 
Secretary of the Navy to determine whether 
the government should take over the boat. 
These trials were very different from the 
stringent tests the Holland boats had to 
undergo later. They consisted only of a sub¬ 
merged run of two miles, during which we 
could come to the surface as often as we chose 
and stay as long as we wanted. In addition 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 123 
we fired a dummy torpedo from our only tube, 
and a dummy projectile from our dynamite 
gun. 

The trials lasted about two hours. No time 
was taken by the board; it did not know 
whether the boat was making four knots or 
twenty-four. Nor was any time taken for the 
loading of a torpedo; in fact, no member of 
the board was in the boat. 

During our submerged trial run we came to 
the surface within a few feet of a fisherman 
who had evidently never seen a submarine. 
Just what passed through his mind when he 
saw this uncanny object come up, evidently 
from the bottom of the sea, we never knew, but 
the rapidity with which he hoisted anchor and 
set sail for home led us to believe that he would 
tell a remarkable story to his friends ashore. 
It turned out that he had an eye for business, 
as we received a bill from him for the breaking 
of one centerboard. The bill was paid, al¬ 
though the responsibility was not ours. 

The report of the board was such that the 
Navy Department recommended further 
trials. To prepare for another board’s inspec¬ 
tion, we spent the entire summer making 
changes and testing improved devices, with 
our base at South Brooklyn. All our sub- 


124 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

merged work was done in New York Bay, be¬ 
tween Governor's Island and Fort Hamilton, 
the worst place we could have selected. When 
submerged we did not know whether we would 
come up under a mud scow or an ocean liner. 
Being before the days of periscopes, we had 
no means of observation except by bringing 
the boat to the surface. 

In November of 1898 we conducted our sec¬ 
ond set of official trials. They yielded about 
the same result as the first. The board ap¬ 
pointed this time by the Navy Department 
was headed by Captain Evans, the famous 
“Fighting Bob” who commanded the battle¬ 
ship Iowa. They required us to fire a White- 
head torpedo. We had never before attempted 
to load the torpedo tube of the Holland with a 
real charge. A part of the boat's structure 
interfered with the operation, and it was 
necessary to remove the obstacle before the 
torpedo tube could be loaded. 

We did all we were asked to do, but it was 
not enough. The board reported that the boat 
steered erratically; this they believed was due 
to the inexperience of the skipper. As I hap¬ 
pened to be the skipper and did not want the 
boat condemned, I accepted the verdict. I 
promised myself that the next set of trials 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 125 

would be run by a more experienced man, and 
I would be the man. 

Up to this time Holland had built five boats. 
All but the Holland had gone into the discard. 
In each he had placed the rudders forward of 
the propeller. I have yet to see a boat with the 
rudder in this position that can be handled 
satisfactorily. He had always navigated the 
boats himself and claimed that their steering 
qualities were good. My first attempt at navi¬ 
gating the Holland was during a run made 
several weeks before the official trials, and I 
found that steering her was the most unsatis¬ 
factory task I had ever undertaken. The criti¬ 
cism annoyed Holland, but he encountered 
worse from a group of spectators who had 
been watching our maneuvers from the deck 
of a small tug. One of them compared the 
course of the Holland to that of a drunken 
washerwoman. 

On all the earlier runs Holland’s method of 
trimming the boat for submerging, from the 
viewpoint of later submarine navigators, was 
exceedingly crude. We were always accom¬ 
panied by a tug which carried several hundred 
pounds of pig iron, which was utilized as bal¬ 
last. The boat was carefully ballasted before 
leaving the dock, but if Holland found that she 


126 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

was too light, when he got out into the bay, 
with all the tanks full, he would blow out some 
of the ballast, come alongside the tug, and take 
on a fresh supply of pig iron. If, on the other 
hand, he found her too heavy, with tanks all 
full, he would remove some of the iron. This 
process would sometimes consume two hours. 

At length I suggested to Holland that he 
adjust this trim by putting in or leaving out 
water in the forward ballast tank, and put 
enough fixed ballast on board so that this tank 
would only be partially filled at any time. This 
method did not appeal to him, as he did not 
believe at that time—he did so later—in carry¬ 
ing tanks only partially filled, or they should 
at least be nearly full. 

It took considerable argument to convince 
him that the change was practical, but a trial 
was made and the result proved fully satisfac¬ 
tory. It eliminated the necessity of carrying 
ballast on the tender. Later two trimming 
tanks were installed to adjust changes of trim 
due to variation in the specific gravity of the 
water or in the weight and number of persons 
carried from time to time. 

So far, Holland himself always handled 
both steering and diving rudders. As we had 
never operated in water of excessive depth, the 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 127 

usual method followed was to put the diving 
rudder hard down until the boat was running 
along the bottom, and then leave it there. If 
the bottom was level, the boat would maintain 
an even depth; she could not go any deeper, 
and the down rudder would keep her from 
coming up. I suggested that I handle the diving 
rudder, while he steered. This change worked 
well and henceforth the diving rudder had a 
separate operator. 

Our instruments were more or less crude. 
We had no regular gauges to tell us how deep 
we were submerged, nor accurate clinometers 
recording the boat's angle when diving, both 
positions most important to ascertain. In 
handling the diving rudder I had to depend on 
an ordinary steam gauge six inches in 
diameter, calibrated to one hundred pounds. 
This instrument would register only a small 
fraction of an inch for each foot in depth, and 
it was impossible to ascertain from it the actual 
depth we were submerged by several feet. For 
a clinometer I used the wooden stool I sat on 
in handling the diving rudder, and by the 
'Teel" of this stool under me I could tell when 
the boat changed its angle. Even by this crude 
arrangement I was able to gauge the boat’s 
angle quite accurately. 


128 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

The need of a highly sensitive instrument 
for this work led me in 1900 to invent and 
patent a clinometer, which I believe was 
adopted in almost every submarine in the 
world. 

Running a vessel under water varies greatly 
from operating on the surface. Above water 
a man, walking from amidships to the bow, 
will depress the bow, displacing a greater 
amount of water, and consequently the bow 
will be able to sustain the increased weight. * 
Once submerged, no change of displacement 
can occur, and therefore such shifting of 
weight would cause the boat to take a greater 
angle. “A boat submerged,” as C. H. Bedell 
explained it in discussing the later Holland 
boats, “may be likened to a pendulum having a 
length equal to the distance between the center 
of buoyancy of the boat and its center of grav- 
ity, generally a distance of about sixteen 
inches, and the weight of the pendulum being 
the weight of the boat, say 500 tons. A weight 
moved from amidships to one end of the boat 
would produce a leverage to swing this 
pendulum from the vertical—in other words, 
to cause the boat to take an angle by the bow 
or stern. As a submarine when emerged will 
go the way she is pointed, it will readily be 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 129 

seen that change of angle will cause her to 
change her depth. The man at the diving 
wheel nowadays not only has his wheel and 
depth gauge before him, but also a clinometer, 
a sort of level by which he can tell the exact 
angle of the ship, and therefore tell whether 
the boat will change her depth or not as she 
goes along. As a matter of fact, the boat is 
swinging up or down most of the time, and it 
is the duty of the man at the diving wheel to 
check these motions and control the boat so 
that she will remain at the depth desired.” 

In operating the Holland great care had to 
be exercised to obviate a shifting of weight 
when the boat was running submerged. Now¬ 
adays, with much larger boats, a man's weight 
bears such a small ratio to the total weight 
that a crew's ordinary movements are readily 
counteracted by the diving-wheel operator. 


CHAPTER X 


Tests off Long Island.—Clara Barton as a passenger. 
—Crew unconscious from escaped gases.—Mice as a 
submarine barometer of gas leaks.—Erratic behavior of 
torpedoes.—The diver who became a floating balloon. 


As Holland's plans now engaged his entire 
attention, the conduct of further trials was 
delegated to me. Reconstruction work, neces¬ 
sary to improve the Holland's efficiency, occu¬ 
pied us for some months. These changes in¬ 
cluded cutting part off the stern, putting the 
propeller forward and the rudders aft. We 
decided that the after dynamite gun was use¬ 
less and removed it. 

Up to that time no provision had been made 
for torpedo compensation, a subject already 
alluded to in a previous chapter. In a sub¬ 
marine boat of this size compensation for 
weights was very important. In other words, 
when the boat was once trimmed for diving, 
no additional weight could be taken in or ex¬ 
pelled without affecting the boat's trim. When 
a torpedo was fired the tube instantly filled 
with water. To maintain the trim this water 
had to be kept in the same relative position. 
Hence it was necessary to install compensation 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 131 

tanks, in which the water from the tube could 
be blown or pumped in order to load another 
torpedo. Each compensating tank held a 
weight of water corresponding to the weight 
of the torpedo. The steering gear had also to 
be rebuilt and rearranged. 

These changes were completed about April, 
1899, and we were again ready to begin our 
under-water work. While we were passing 
through this period of rebuilding, many of the 
people who were financing the enterprise be¬ 
came dissatisfied; they could not understand 
why a submarine boat, once finished, required 
improvements. They were told that if they 
desired the project to proceed to a successful 
end they must leave the engineering staff 
alone. This advice was taken. 

No satisfactory experiments could be under¬ 
taken anywhere around New York, owing to 
traffic, shoal water and other obstacles. 
Searching for a good practice ground, we de¬ 
cided that Peconic Bay, a few miles above 
Greenport, Long Island, was an ideal spot, 
with New Suffolk as our location. There, 
early in June, we removed our entire outfit on 
a steam lighter with the little Holland in tow. 

Our first shop, which we built ourselves, was 
a one-story building seven by nine feet, and 


132 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 
cost, when completed, about thirty-five dollars. 
Before the season was over, we outgrew it and 
rented another building close by, for which we 
paid four dollars a month rent, an excessive 
sum, but we needed the building. 

Our program embraced putting the Holland 
through her paces to fit her for undergoing a 
series of further trials the Navy Department 
had mapped out. The tests were much more 
elaborate and difficult than any she had so far 
endured. Betweentimes we would give public 
exhibitions for the benefit of representatives 
of foreign navies, newspaper men, and some 
of our friends. Some of these runs were more 
or less exciting. 

On one of these trips we had Clara Barton, 
founder of the Red Cross, on board as a guest. 
Perhaps she was the first woman—certainly 
she was among the first of her sex—to venture 
in a submarine. We ran the Holland for sev¬ 
eral miles on the surface, then submerged her 
—and Miss Barton—to a depth of fifteen feet 
on a run of two miles. Holland explained to 
her the boat’s mechanism, particularly the 
operation and effect of the torpedo. If he 
looked for congratulations on his ingenuity, he 
did not get them. On the contrary, she ex¬ 
pressed her great surprise that any American 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 133 
citizen should be guilty of inventing such a 
deadly instrument of war. Holland, with his 
usual Irish good nature, assured her that to 
take life was not the purpose of the boat, but 
rather the contrary. He believed that if all the 
nations of the world were equipped with sub¬ 
marines there would be no war. The World 
War proved that he erred in this belief. 

Had Miss Barton been on board on another 
occasion, her disapproval of the submarine as 
a deadly weapon even in peace times would 
have been sustained by experience. We had 
arranged to give an exhibition for the benefit 
of U. S. Senator William M. Stewart of 
Nevada, and Major-General M. C. Butler, of 
South Carolina, together with several repre¬ 
sentatives of foreign governments. The pro¬ 
gram provided for a surface run of several 
miles, a submerged run of two miles, a torpedo 
attack on an imaginary enemy, and a flight 
under sea. The exhibition was intended to 
prove that if the unsuspecting vessel was 
anchored she would have gone to the bottom 
as the Maine did in Havana harbor. 

I vras in command with a crew who had 
frequently navigated the ocean bed and had 
become fascinated with the work. At the end 
of the first mile under water we came up for 


134 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

observation, having no periscopes. Our con¬ 
ning tower remained exposed only five sec¬ 
onds, during which I gauged the distance to 
our target and disappeared. The torpedo we 
used, the regulation Whitehead, was dis¬ 
charged 600 yards from the imaginary ship. 
Immediately after firing we turned, still sub¬ 
merged, and disappeared. The torpedo made 
an accurate run and struck the imaginary ship 
squarely in the center. 

The exhibition over, we brought our boat 
to the surface and started on the return trip. 
The Holland’s engine was not reversible, and 
in order to make landings it was necessary to 
disconnect it and couple the electric motor to 
the propeller. The run home was made with¬ 
out a hitch. When about 500 yards from the 
dock where we were to land, I gave the usual 
signal to disconnect the engine and connect 
the motor. At that time I had three men in the 
boat and two on deck. Immediately after the 
signal was answered my chief machinist re¬ 
ported that the engineer had fainted away. 
I had him brought from the engine room to the 
conning tower, the only opening in the boat for 
fresh air, whereupon I heard the chief machin¬ 
ist say, “I am going, too!” Immediately he 
became unconscious. These two casualties 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 135 

left only one conscious man in the boat, the 
electrician in charge of the main motor. As 
we neared the dock I gave the signal to stop 
the motor. The electrician answered. Then 
I gave the signal to reverse the motor. This 
was also answered. But my order for the stop 
signal brought no reply. The last man below 
deck had become unconscious. 

I dropped down from the conning tower, 
walked aft, a distance of about twenty feet, 
and stopped the main motor. Before I could 
get back to the conning tower, it was my turn 
to collapse and join my unconscious crew. 

Meantime the men on deck had succeeded in 
getting a line ashore and making the boat fast. 
A number of people on the dock watched our 
maneuvers and several scrambled on board to 
rescue the men below, only to be themselves 
overcome in the boat. Finally, all the men, 
now eight in all, were brought out, and lay on 
the dock unconscious, nearer dead than alive. 
One by one they regained consciousness with 
medical aid, but it took about four hours to 
bring the last man back to life. 

The talk went that this was the last of the 
submarine. The crew would never be tempted 
to enter the boat again. But every member 
reported for duty on time the next morning. 


136 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

Their mishap was due to a leaking exhaust 
pipe admitting gases into the boat. This was 
one of the most troublesome defects we had to 
contend with in the early days of submarines. 
We could find no means of indicating the pres¬ 
ence of this gas. For several years we spent 
thousands of dollars and much time trying to 
do so. At last we resorted to the old-fash¬ 
ioned mouse test, which merely consisted in 
keeping a cage of mice in the boat. When the 
mice died it was time to go ashore. A cage of 
mice has been handed down as one of the im¬ 
portant adjuncts to a successful submarine. 

By the middle of October we were confident 
that the boat was in perfect condition, the 
crew thoroughly trained, and the skipper ex¬ 
perienced enough to handle the craft to the 
satisfaction of the Navy Department. The 
latter was so notified, and on November 6th a 
special board of naval officers assembled at 
New Suffolk to witness the trials. Despite the 
burning out of two sections of our main motor 
armature, caused by a deterioration of the in¬ 
sulation (traceable to the effect of the salt¬ 
water bath the boat received in dock three 
years previous), the trials were a noteworthy 
success. The Holland returned to her berth 
with a large new broom lashed to her mast. 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 137 

We had passed through months of danger¬ 
ous experimental work. Every day brought a 
new problem; we never knew what was going 
to happen next; we were never sure, on start¬ 
ing, that we would return. Yet our men never 
hesitated. For them teaching a submarine to 
do its work was a fascinating adventure. 

Once we made a two-mile submerged run, 
and on coming to the surface were hailed by a 
fisherman. 

“You fellows better look out,” he shouted, 
“or the undertaker in this town will be work¬ 
ing overtime.” 

He told us that while running submerged we 
had missed a huge rock by inches. His state¬ 
ment was correct. Thereafter we were watch¬ 
ful of hidden dangers, but could never be cer¬ 
tain of where they lay. 

We were not always sure of the behavior of 
our torpedoes. Out on a trial, we charged the 
torpedo—a regulation Whitehead of the older 
type—with the customary amount of com¬ 
pressed air, and placed it in the tube ready to 
fire. The boat was sealed and water admitted 
to the ballast tanks, until we were awash with 
only the conning tower perceptible above the 
waters of the bay. When the torpedo was fired 
I could see, from the deadlights in the conning 


138 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

tower, the white wake as it sped on its course. 
An instant after a column of water shot into 
the air directly ahead of me. Evidently the 
torpedo was not acting according to regula¬ 
tions. I put the helm hard over, blew out one 
water ballast, and came to the surface. The 
column of water was still spouting; that told 
me the torpedo had struck bottom and was 
operating there fast in the mud. For some 
unaccountable reason its diving rudders had 
refused to function and the torpedo accord¬ 
ingly turned tail upon being fired, headed for 
the sea-bed at a speed of about thirty miles per 
hour. We immediately dropped a buoy to 
mark the place and returned to our base. 

As these torpedoes were worth five thousand 
dollars, we could not well afford to lose them. 
A diver spent a fortnight searching the bot¬ 
tom of the bay, for the missing weapon, with¬ 
out success. As a last resort a member of our 
crew donned a diving suit and went down. 
Slowly he sank to the bottom of the bay. In 
about thirty seconds a dark object shot to the 
surface. It looked like a diving suit, but about 
four times its natural size. It appeared that 
the relief valve on top of the helmet had 
caught, allowing the air from the pumps to 
accumulate in the suit, causing so much buoy- 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 139 

ancy that suit and man came to the surface like 
a skyrocket. The conduct of the diving suit 
was on a par with that of the erratic torpedo. 
The latter had produced a geyser, the suit an 
under-water balloon. The helpless man con¬ 
tributed a geyser of language which added to 
the gayety. The helmet was adjusted, the man 
again went over the side, and within ten min¬ 
utes the torpedo was located and hitched to our 
painter in tow to our base. 

The whimsies of those early torpedoes as 
catapulted from the little Holland —which 
might have been at fault, too—were as un¬ 
seemly as the delinquencies of a recalcitrant 
child. In our target practice the uppermost 
question was, “What will she do now?” We 
never knew before the event. In familiarizing 
ourselves with handling and operating tor¬ 
pedoes, we would start two miles from our 
target (which consisted of buoys placed 300 
feet apart, to represent the length of a small 
war vessel), running at full speed on the sur¬ 
face. When about 600 yards from the target 
we would discharge the weapon. The mech¬ 
anism of the torpedo was always carefully ad¬ 
justed. We would place our little steam tender 
at one side of the target to pick up the torpedo 
when it had finished its run. On one occasion 


140 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 
it made a straight run and passed through the 
center of the target. So far it had acquitted 
itself well. But it then took a quick turn at a 
right angle, made a complete circle around our 
tender, and aimed for us like a boomerang. 
Only swift action by us prevented it from 
sinking the submarine which had sent it forth. 


CHAPTER XI 


The Holland’s royal progress from Long Island to 
the Potomac.—Curious crowds en route attracted by 
the wonder boat.—Insatiable public curiosity.—Guard¬ 
ing her secrets.—Storage-battery problem and security 
from gas explosions.—Washington trials to win official 
support for submarine development.—Obstructive sight¬ 
seers on private craft.—Regulating the boat’s trim for 
fresh-water navigation. 

The Holland was next scheduled to give 
some exhibitions in the Potomac River for the 
enlightenment of the government folks at 
Washington. This engagement meant a trip 
of nearly 500 miles, the longest any submarine 
had undertaken up to that time. 

On November 9th we left New Suffolk, and 
tied up in Greenport for the night. The next 
morning we were under way at daylight. 
There was a forty-mile gale blowing and the 
storm signals were set for something worse. 
When we reached Plum Island we decided 
that we would be happier in Greenport harbor 
than in cruising about Long Island Sound in 
a fifty-foot submarine, and back we went, 
waiting for better weather. Two days later, 
in good climatic conditions, we made a com¬ 
fortable trip to New Haven. 

The next day we reached New York, where 


142 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

the insurance companies refused to cover us 
for an outside trip to the Chesapeake capes. 
As we could not afford to take any risks, we 
chose the inside route (now a part of the pro¬ 
posed inland waterways) via the Raritan 
River to New Brunswick, through the Dela¬ 
ware and Raritan Canal to Bordentown, down 
the Delaware River and Bay to Delaware City, 
through the Delaware and Chesapeake Canal 
to Chesapeake City, down the Elk River to 
Chesapeake Bay, following the bay to the Po¬ 
tomac River, and up the river to Washington. 
An eager and curious populace awaited us at 
each of these points. The coming of the Hol¬ 
land was an event. 

As the Holland was drawing about eight 
feet of water, and the maximum depth of the 
Raritan Canal is only seven feet, it was neces¬ 
sary to place pontoons on either side to lift 
her about eighteen inches above the normal 
water line. These pontoons were of wood 
and heavily timbered to withstand any shocks 
to which the boat might be subjected in passing 
through the canal. All this work was done at 
Elizabethport, New Jersey, w r here the boat was 
built. On December 2d we left Elizabethport, 
and late in the afternoon that day entered the 
first lock of the canal at New Brunswick, tying 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 143 

up there for the night. Here we found several 
hundred people on the dock waiting to behold 
the submarine wonder. Many had been there 
for hours. We were under way at daylight the 
following morning, and as we passed through 
various towns crowds numbering from SO to 
5,000 people lay in wait. 

At Princeton the onlookers began to assem¬ 
ble at the canal about noon (at this point the 
canal is about two miles from the town 
proper), and waited patiently until dark, when 
word came that we were berthed for the night 
six miles distant. At midnight our watchman 
turned us out to report that so great a crowd 
had assembled that he was getting nervous. 
Apparently half the inhabitants of New Jersey 
had gathered on the banks, armed with all 
manner of lights, in their eagerness to see the 
boat. Most of them appeared to be workmen 
employed during the day who could not re¬ 
strain their curiosity and meant to gratify it 
before the boat passed on. 

The inquisitive ones pressed forward and 
asked numerous questions. Did the boat go 
entirely out of sight? How far could we see 
when entirely submerged? What did we do 
for air when we were beneath the surface? 
One of our crew was always on hand with 


144 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 
ready answers to such questions. The wise¬ 
acres must be made wiser. Each of the crew, 
he told them, carried a small bottle of liquid 
air, and when he felt the air in the boat be¬ 
coming vitiated he would touch his tongue 
with a drop of the liquid, which sustained him 
for a long time. This explanation served. 
After spoiling our night’s rest, the crowd 
slowly dispersed. I imagine some of them 
talked about that midnight excursion for long 
after. 

Our largest crowd awaited us at Trenton. 
Most of the shopkeepers had closed for half 
a day to give their employes a chance to see 
the boat, and the docks and canal banks for 
three miles were black with people. At Bor- 
dentown, where we locked out in the Delaware 
River, we found the public schools closed in 
honor of our arrival and most of the children 
assembled on the docks. At Philadelphia, 
where we remained a week, we found it neces¬ 
sary to ask the police department for a guard 
night and day. We were flooded with re¬ 
quests from the public schools and various city 
organizations for passes to inspect the boat. 
But the boat was only on view from the out¬ 
side. 

The Holland’s next laps took her to the 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 145 

Chesapeake Canal, then to Chesapeake City, 
and down the Elk River into Chesapeake Bay. 
Here a gale of wind struck us and we were 
obliged to find a lee under the western shore 
of the bay and anchor till the wind died down. 
The next day we were at Annapolis, where we 
told submarine stories to the Naval Academy 
cadets, and the day following we tied up at the 
Washington Navy Yard on the Potomac River, 
thirty-nine days after our departure from 
Greenport. If ever a crew was glad of a good 
night's rest in a real bed, that crew was the 
Holland's . 

Our winter's work here was designed to 
arouse the confidence of Congressmen, naval 
officers, and the public in the practicality of 
submarine navigation. We had reached a 
stage where we must demonstrate that sub- 
mersibles were vital auxiliaries of the Ameri¬ 
can navy. Consequently, we set about giving 
the Holland a needed overhauling after her 
six weeks’ trip. While en route little attention 
had been paid to grooming her. She was so 
far from being in shipshape that some of our 
efficient housekeepers would certainly have 
criticized our methods, had they been allowed 
to examine the boat's upkeep. But we were 
safe. Up to that time no ladies—except Miss 


146 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

Barton—had been allowed on board. We were 
not borrowing trouble in that quarter. 

The usual crowds flocked to the navy yard, 
hoping to obtain a view of the inside of our 
strange craft. The yacht Josephine, our con¬ 
voy, had been moved alongside the dock and 
the little Holland was tied outside of her, com¬ 
pletely hidden from the shore. No one had 
access to the Josephine except workmen and 
the crew of the Holland. Our visitors dis¬ 
persed, sorely disappointed. 

I suspected that many of them lay awake at 
night devising pretexts that might enable them 
to get even a glimpse of the mysterious sub¬ 
marine. One instance of an ingenious curiosity 
was provided by a newspaper reporter who 
had ascertained that we were using an Otto 
gasoline engine built by the Philadelphia firm 
of that name. He came to me claiming that 
he represented the company, who, he said, had 
sent him to examine the engine. I asked him 
if he knew a certain man connected with the 
company, giving him a fictitious name. Yes, 
he knew him very well; had seen him only the 
night before. I told him he had not, and de¬ 
manded what he was after. Of course he got 
no news. Years after I met him on the street 
in Petrograd. He had not forgotten his first 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 147 

attempt to enter a submarine. This was an 
example of the many subterfuges resorted to 
by newspaper men and others to get on board 
our wonderful little boat (at least, so we con¬ 
sidered her). 

In the end we had to place guards at the 
navy yard to hold off visitors. These guards 
had never been inside a submarine; had, in 
fact, never seen one before. Hence they im¬ 
parted the right kind of information to the 
inquisitive public. It was amusing, as well as 
misleading, and accordingly served our pur¬ 
pose of protecting the Holland's secrets. 
Moreover, the answers satisfied visitors and 
relieved our working force from the responsi¬ 
bility of disclosing information. 

Our men were otherwise engaged in recon¬ 
ditioning the Holland after her long and 
tedious trip (long in time but not in distance, 
tedious because the little boat was never built 
for long cruises and her accommodations were 
narrow and confined). It was a protracted 
and irksome task. The engine had to be taken 
down and each part not in perfect condition 
either repaired or renewed; the electric motors 
had to be tested and parts that showed weak¬ 
ness replaced. The storage battery, which was, 
and is to-day, the most important element in a 


148 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

submarine (because it is the only source of 
power for propulsion while submerged), had 
to be examined and a part of the installation 
renewed. 

The battery in this boat, as in some of our 
later vessels, was the most troublesome part of 
our equipment. As nearly everyone knows, a 
storage battery consists of a series of lead 
plates immersed in a solution of sulphuric 
acid. In the earlier submarine installations 
the jar in which these elements were placed 
consisted of a skeleton frame of steel entirely 
covered with sheet lead. They were placed 
in the boat in rows half an inch apart, the 
space between them filled in with wood strips 
for insulation, as each had to be insulated 
from its neighbors. The wood was treated 
with acid-proof paint before installation, but 
in spite of this protection, the acid fumes in a 
short time would attack the wood and cause 
trouble. Eternal vigilance on our part kept 
us from shortening our existence. A storage 
battery when charging gives off large volumes 
of hydrogen gas, which is highly explosive. 
Without careful attention to ventilation and 
adequate means for carrying off the accumu¬ 
lation of gas, an explosion was liable to occur 
at any moment. 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 149 

We never had a serious accident. Person¬ 
ally, I am very proud of a record, covering a 
period of twenty-five years in submarine work, 
in which we have never lost a life or had a 
man seriously injured. In the early days, and 
up to 1910, we not only had storage-battery gas 
to contend with, but also the danger arising 
from large quantities of gasoline confined in 
tanks and pipes, which were liable to leak. Es¬ 
caped gasoline would flow directly to the bilge 
of the boat, and in this confined space would 
give off a certain amount of gas that might 
readily become ignited. This occurred fre¬ 
quently in foreign submarines, and in a few 
instances in those of our own navy. 

In Holland’s first boats his only means of 
propulsion under water was an oil engine. For 
combustion, he was obliged to use compressed 
air, but as he could carry only a small amount 
of air, the length of time he could stay sub¬ 
merged was limited. When the storage battery 
came into use, he considered the problem of 
staying under water solved. In a measure, 
this was true, but when the danger of hydrogen 
gas explosions became apparent, we looked for 
some less dangerous means of accomplishing 
a desired end. 

About the beginning of 1900 the Holland 


150 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

had become in the pink of condition and ready 
for exhibition runs. Our next step was select¬ 
ing a suitable trial ground. The chart showed 
us an available run just.below Fort Washing¬ 
ton, about twelve miles down the Potomac 
from the capital. Here we had a stretch of 
water five to six fathoms in depth, 400 yards 
wide and over a mile in length, which carried 
us nearly to Mount Vernon. I often thought, 
while running on the river bed, of the progress 
made in navigation since George Washington 
looked out from his porch on the river. 

On either side of the channel at this point 
were long stretches of mud fiats on which there 
were only a few feet of water at any time. We 
deemed it necessary to erect poles along those 
fiats on either side, and attach white flags to 
them, to show us the location of the mud when 
we came to the surface. We did not care to 
get stranded in mud at the bottom of the river. 
It was difficult to judge distance accurately, 
with the observer only a few inches above the 
surface. Up to that time, periscopes were un¬ 
known and our only means of taking an ob¬ 
servation was to expose our conning tower, 
which in our early boats was very low. 

We laid out another course at Alexandria, 
several miles nearer Washington, for short 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 151 

runs. The stretch here was only a half mile in 
length and about 300 yards wide, with a depth 
about the same as that of the Mount Vernon 
course. 

We got no further for a period. Winter set 
in; the river was frozen for a distance of about 
twenty miles and practically stopped naviga¬ 
tion for nearly a month. We had supposed 
when we reached Washington that we would 
be in a part of the sunny South. 

With the first of March the ice broke up and 
we began our work. The newspaper men, who 
had been keeping close watch of us, resumed 
their activities at the same time. We dis¬ 
couraged spectators, but there was no escaping 
them. Even practice runs at break of day on 
the Alexandria course, before people were 
usually out and about, did not protect us from 
publicity. Accounts of our movements ap¬ 
peared in the press just the same. Launches, 
rowboats, towboats, and other craft came on 
the scene, waiting for hours for us to appear. 
We had to requisition two patrol boats to keep 
sightseers off the course. Otherwise, we ran 
the risk of coming up under some craft, cap¬ 
sizing her, and perhaps drowning those on 
board, to say nothing of ourselves. The peri¬ 
scope obviated this danger later. On the Po- 


152 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

tomac River we encountered a new experience 
in operating the boat. It was the first time we 
had handled the Holland in fresh water. Her 
ballast equipment had been regulated for sus¬ 
taining her trim in salt water. The difference 
of displacement between fresh and salt water 
(several hundred pounds) barred us from fill¬ 
ing all the ballast tanks. Had we done so the 
boat would have sunk. Previous experience had 
taught us that handling a submarine with main 
ballast tanks partially filled was a dangerous 
experiment, as the angle of the boat in diving 
and rising was such as to cause free water to 
rush to the lowest point, suddenly increasing 
the weight of the boat at this point and imped¬ 
ing her control with the horizontal rudders. 
The Holland, as originally designed, had three 
main ballast tanks, one forward, one amidships 
and one aft. After our first experiment in 
fresh water we had to fill the after main bal¬ 
last tank with block cork, carefully packed and 
cemented in with marine glue, then to adjust 
lead ballast, which for our work in fresh water 
remained permanent. 

This readjustment of ballast for fresh water 
was a vital necessity if the Holland was to 
prove her fitness for adoption by the navy. 


CHAPTER XII 


Naval skepticism.—Commander Kimball's support. 
—Official trials of the Holland .—Avoirdupois of con¬ 
gressional passengers upsets boat’s trim.—Thrilling 
descent stern foremost.—Japanese interest.—Ruse of 
naval officer to take a submerged run unknown to his 
wife.—How the air pressure (real air) affected a Con¬ 
gressman.—A submarine voyage not dangerous.—Edu¬ 
cating the official and public mind.—Dewey’s favorable 
views.—Naval board cautiously recommends acceptance 
of the Holland and the building of further boats.—• 
Admiral Hichborn’s dissent from the board’s criticisms 
of boat’s showing.—Training raw naval crew to run 
her.—Evading observation from naval scouts in night 
maneuvers at Narragansett. 


The outlook for the Holland was none too 
bright. The last naval board which reviewed 
her performances off Long Island, despite our 
belief that she fully proved her worth, had re¬ 
ported unfavorably to John D. Long, then 
Secretary of the Navy. A member of the 
board, Rear-Admiral Philip Hichborn, chief of 
the Bureau of Construction, alone dissented, 
filing a minority report in our favor. 

We had yet to overcome the skepticism pro¬ 
duced by the nonsuccess of the Plunger , the 
first boat Holland built for the navy. The dis¬ 
credit was laid to us, though her failure was 
solely due to navy technicians, who had insisted 
on installing a steam-power plant in face of 


154 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

Holland’s strong objections. The steam plant 
was the cause of her failure, but the circum¬ 
stances were never investigated. It was 
enough that the boat was rejected and that ac¬ 
tion condemned the whole principle of the sub¬ 
marine as then known. 

Our supporters remained few. I could al¬ 
most count them on the fingers of one hand. 
Among them, Commander Kimball remained 
one of our sturdiest advocates. Two years 
before, in 1898, when in command of our tor¬ 
pedo-boat flotilla ofif Cuba during the war with 
Spain, he asked the Navy Department to pur¬ 
chase the Holland as she was then, just off the 
stocks, put him in command, and order him to 
torpedo the Spanish fleet in Santiago harbor. 
Holland’s plan was as venturesome. He 
wanted to take the boat to Havana, counter¬ 
mine the harbor, and shell the fortifications at 
close range with guncotton. But the Navy 
Department shook its wise head, as we sus¬ 
pected it was doing now, on the eve of the 
Holland's official trials to determine her 
utility. 

Commander Kimball was among the first of 
the naval experts to espouse the cause of 
undersea protection for our coasts and har¬ 
bors. Twenty years previously he encouraged 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 155 

Holland when the latter was an obscure 
teacher wrestling with his submarine concep¬ 
tions in Paterson, New Jersey. He was so 
impressed by Holland’s early plans that he in¬ 
vited the inventor to discuss them with him at 
Washington, but lack of railroad fare proved 
an obstacle. Commander Kimball then vainly 
sought to have the Navy Department employ 
Holland as a draftsman at $2.50 a day. Had 
the department utilized the inventor’s services, 
the government would now be in possession of 
all the Holland patents. Holland himself 
wrote of Commander Kimball that submarin¬ 
ing owed more to him than to any other man. 

The submarine at this time was probably 
the most talked of, and least understood, of all 
modern weapons of war. Yet the almost over¬ 
whelming naval opinion, as we sensed it, was 
that the device could never be of any military 
value. Nevertheless, our own confidence was 
unabated. 

The official trials came on March 14, 1900, 
on the Fort Washington course, before Ad¬ 
miral George Dewey (a member of the Navy 
General Board), the heads of the naval bu¬ 
reaus, Charles H. Allen, Assistant-Secretary 
of the Navy (who succeeded Theodore Roose¬ 
velt), and a party of Senators and Congress- 


156 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

jnen. The admiral and his staff were grouped 
on board the naval gunboat Sylph. Our con¬ 
voy, the Josephine, accommodated the congres¬ 
sional party. 

We ran submerged for ten minutes on a 
straight course, exposing only the tops of our 
flagstaffs, to which were attached two small 
flags. Then we came to the surface, fired a 
Whitehead torpedo at an imaginary vessel, 
dived, turned under water, ran back sub¬ 
merged for five minutes to show our ability to 
escape from an enemy after firing the torpedo, 
and emerged on the surface again, with our 
water ballast pumped out and an open conning 
tower. 

In submerging at the outset we disappeared 
in twelve seconds. The run down the river was 
made at a speed of about six knots with a vari¬ 
ation of depth of not more than six inches. 
The actual period of our exposure in firing the 
torpedo and disappearing was only seven 
seconds. 

The torpedo, after leaving the tube, made a 
straight run for about 600 yards and suddenly 
disappeared. A small boat manned by two men 
was stationed at the point of firing and imme¬ 
diately rowed to where the torpedo was last 
seen. They found no trace of it, after a search 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 157 

of several hours. Several days later we were 
notified by telephone that something which 
looked like a torpedo had been taken in a shad 
fisherman’s net, and was lying at a small dock 
in Alexandria. We located the fisherman, who 
wanted to profit by his find. We succeeded in 
convincing him that he was holding govern¬ 
ment property and was liable to imprisonment. 
Having heard that the torpedo was worth 
about $5,000, he had bargained to get at least 
ten per cent of that sum for recovering it. We 
settled the award at fifty dollars. 

While the Navy Department pondered over 
its decision, the Holland exhibited her points 
to other interested parties. Some were capi¬ 
talists looking for investments; others were 
foreign experts. Several trips were made for 
various Senators and Congressmen, whom we 
specially regarded in view of the support they 
could give to submarines. 

One run we made for three members of Con¬ 
gress was memorable. At first we ran a mile 
submerged, while our cautious visitors watched 
the maneuvers from the deck of a yacht. We 
had first to assure them, before they ventured 
in her, that the boat could be controlled. Then 
we emerged and took them on board to enable 
them to observe the boat’s internal operation. 


158 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

Here we made a miscalculation. A perfect ex¬ 
hibition of a submarine is one in which the 
boat submerges quickly from the light condi¬ 
tion. ^Usually we effected this by first trim¬ 
ming the boat with a certain amount of water 
ballast, then blowing out certain tanks. When 
we were ready to submerge we knew exactly 
what tanks to fill to put the boat in diving trim. 
I had carefully estimated the weight of the 
three gentlemen and allowed for the amount of 
water ballast necessary to compensate for this 
weight. Either the man at the Kingston valve 
disobeyed orders, or my calculations were 
wrong. At any rate, after we had sealed our 
conning tower, with our visitors on board, and 
admitted what we supposed to be the right 
amount of water, the boat started for the bot¬ 
tom of the river, stern first, like an old anchor. 
Only quick action by the crew saved us from 
hitting the mud. Later we strove to explain to 
our guests that the boat’s behavior was in¬ 
tended to show our perfect control. I do not 
believe they were ever persuaded that such a 
descent stern foremost was part of the pro¬ 
gram. 

Among naval officers who watched our 
trials was Lieutenant Ide, a representative of 
the Japanese navy. He made several sub- 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 159 
merged runs with us. Later the Japanese 
government adopted the Holland submarine 
by ordering five boats, due to this officer’s 
favorable report. At the same time they pur¬ 
chased plans for a different type of boat. Two 
of these were built in Japan, with Lieutenant 
Ide in charge of their construction. 

A prominent United States naval officer was 
anxious to make a submerged run with us, but 
his wife objected. We assisted him to foil her 
by arranging an under-water trip at daybreak 
before she (and also the tiresome newspaper 
men) were awake. The run was successfully 
made and no one knew of his exploit. I do 
not think the lady ever learned of the risk her 
husband had taken. But we obtained a con¬ 
vert. 

Less intrepid was a certain member of Con¬ 
gress. He wanted to make a submerged run, 
but confessed to a weak heart and feared the 
effect of the air pressure on his pulse. We as¬ 
sured him that the pressure would not be above 
atmospheric weight. So we took him on board 
one bright spring morning, and on reaching 
our trial course prepared for submergence. 
With the ballast tanks ready for filling, we 
moved further to obtain position. Meantime, 
our guest complained of the air pressure; he 


160 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

feared he might have to ask us to come up. We 
told him that the conning tower was wide open 
and that the air in the boat was the same that 
people outside were breathing. To him this 
was incredible—until he saw the blue sky 
through the open hatch. We could not refrain 
from relating this little incident with some 
relish. The story duly gained currency in the 
House, where his fellow members would ask 
him every morning how his air pressure was. 

This Congressman’s trepidation was nat¬ 
ural enough at the time; behind it was the fear 
of the unknown. The safety of submarines is 
better understood now, yet only comparatively 
few people would probably venture on a long 
journey in one. The success of the merchant 
submarine Deutschland in crossing the Atlan¬ 
tic and entering the harbor at Baltimore with 
a cargo of dyestuffs, as well as a like exploit 
achieved by the German which quietly 

steamed into the Newport Harbor and 
anchored among our ships, was at that time 
wonderful only to the uninitiated. To us who 
had broken in the little Holland and who have 
spent the best part of our lives in the develop¬ 
ment of undersea navigation, these exploits 
did not seem as difficult or as dangerous as 
many of the risks Americans ran every day in 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 161 
other vehicles of locomotion and in their work. 

Submarine navigation is not dangerous. I 
would rather steer a submersible 100 feet be¬ 
low the surface than pilot a passenger vessel 
through a dense fog. It is true that a sub¬ 
marine in war on the high seas becomes a bird 
of prey to be remorselessly pursued with depth 
bombs and other devices the instant she be¬ 
trays her proximity by the slightest indication 
on the surface. In the bold exploits she under¬ 
takes, sinking to great depths might collapse 
her hull through excessive external pressure, 
caused by leaking sea valves or insecure venti¬ 
lators or hatches. She might collide with ves¬ 
sels while on the surface, or with unknown ob¬ 
jects while submerged; or her crew might be 
jeopardized by an internal explosion of stor¬ 
age-battery gas arising from defective venti¬ 
lation. But a submarine sealed up for 
submerging is absolutely water-tight, capable 
of withstanding the heaviest seas and of safely 
descending to great depths. Hence sinking 
through water penetration is remote. At a 
depth of 100 feet there is little danger of col¬ 
lision with other vessels. On the surface the 
largest submarine could submerge from the 
light condition in less than three minutes, and 
when awash in less than five seconds. 


162 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

Security under water was difficult to realize 
in the days of the little Holland, but her ex¬ 
cursions beneath the Potomac for the enlight¬ 
enment of official and unofficial guests were 
slowly educating the public mind in this direc¬ 
tion. The boat’s official exhibition produced a 
doughty advocate of the submarine in the per¬ 
son of the highest officer in the navy. Admiral 
Dewey himself appeared before the House 
Naval Committee and strongly urged that the 
government acquire a number of submarines 
at once in view of the Holland's showing. He 
told the committee that had a determined 
enemy with a submarine boat been located in 
Manila Bay he could not have occupied that 
harbor nor have maintained the blockade. His 
men were eager to fight an enemy they could 
see, but would not have awaited destruction 
from an unseen foe. 

Lieutenant H. H. Caldwell, the admiral's 
secretary (who was in the boat with us to 
watch and report to him on the Holland's in¬ 
ternal operation), was so impressed with her 
that he later resigned from the admiral's staff 
and was placed in command of the boat after 
its acquisition by the government. Thus 
Lieutenant Caldwell became the first subma¬ 
rine captain in the United States navy. 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 163 

Their testimony was a propitious foretoken 
of the Holland’s future, but it only embodied 
individual views. Collective official opinion of 
the navy still showed a timorous and skeptical 
attitude, as expressed in the majority report on 
the Holland made by the Board of Naval Con¬ 
struction. 

The Holland Company had offered the boat 
as she stood for $165,000, or, with certain 
modifications, $170,000, and to build two new 
and larger boats in accordance with plans sub¬ 
mitted for $170,000 each. 

In view of the noncompletion of the 
Plunger, the contract for which, dating from 
March 12, 1895, stipulated this boat’s comple¬ 
tion in twelve months therefrom, the board did 
not recommend the Holland’s purchase by the 
navy. The government had already paid 
$99,716 on account of the Plunger, and the 
board was of opinion that no further contract 
should be awarded until some satisfactory set¬ 
tlement was made regarding her. Subject to 
such an adjustment, the board cautiously indi¬ 
cated that the department might be warranted 
in contracting for a submarine boat of the 
larger type named for the purpose of further 
developing the science of undersea navigation. 
It seemed that the question of possible im- 


164 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 


provements to the Plunger had been in the 
hands of the naval board for several months, 
but the report thereon was held in abeyance, 
supposedly pending the official test of the Hol¬ 
land . The Holland Company had been willing 
to attempt further alterations to the Plunger 
without expense to the government. 

A dissenting report, submitted by Admiral 
Philip Hichborn, held that the board had not 
accorded the Holland Company the credit and 
encouragement it deserved. The admiral 
pointed out that the Holland had been built 
because of the inventor’s conviction that the 
design of the Plunger could be materially im¬ 
proved, and had adequately realized expecta¬ 
tions on her various trials. In view of the 
comparatively small cost of submarine craft, 
the admiral urged the government to encour¬ 
age their development as a measure of precau¬ 
tion, especially in order to have boats available 
for experiment and drills. He wanted the 
department to contract for two boats of the 
Holland type, instead of one. The Holland, 
while acceptable enough, he thought was less 
desirable than boats of larger dimensions. 
Immediate possession of the Holland, how¬ 
ever, in the event of a sudden emergency, 
would be an advantage. On this point Admiral 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 165 

Hichborn harked back to the Spanish War. 
He told the board that had the navy then ac¬ 
quired the boat, and it had reached its present 
state of efficiency, its presence in Cuban waters 
in the spring of 1898 would have had a very 
marked effect. 

The question of the Plunger was adjusted 
and the Holland purchased by the department. 
On April 18, 1900, she was formally taken 
over at the Washington Navy Yard, our years 
of experimental work thus bearing fruit at 
last. 

The Holland duly went to Narragansett 
Bay, where, according to agreement, we un¬ 
dertook to train a naval crew to handle her, 
meantime retaining charge of the boat until 
they were competent. It was toward the latter 
end of June before we reached Newport and 
tied up at the Torpedo Station. 

The department assigned a number of men 
for training under command of Lieutenant 
Caldwell. Preliminary surface runs gave our 
crew of rookies an insight into the boat’s 
mechanism, and, what was as important, the 
needed confidence in embarking upon a new 
method of navigation. Except the commander, 
none had ever before been inside a submarine. 
In due course we let the new crew operate in 


166 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

dock under our supervision. Some necessary 
cleaning and painting then intervened. After¬ 
ward came a number of submerged runs and 
the boat was handled entirely by the navy men. 
By September I pronounced them competent 
to handle her without our assistance. 

With some natural misgivings I stayed out 
of the boat for the first time and watched her 
operations with her new crew. Had my heart 
been weak I may not have survived the experi¬ 
ence. A submarine navigator when inside the 
boat, with everything under his control, can 
confidently confront emergencies; he knows 
them so well. But looking on outside the boat, 
where he can do nothing in case of an accident, 
he is in the helpless position of being unable to 
exercise his knowledge. In this situation I 
found myself during the first run of the Hol¬ 
land with the navy crew, and my trepidation 
was not unwarranted. Some error by the 
operator had caused the premature filling of 
the after tanks, and the stern consequently 
sank about fifteen feet. This meant a danger¬ 
ous angle, with the bow still out of the water. 
It looked to me as though she was going to 
stand upon her tail like a spar buoy and sink. 
I am convinced she would have done so had 
not the commander promptly realized the crisis 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 167 

and filled the forward tanks. Thus the Hol¬ 
land came to rest on an even keel, and I 
breathed more freely. Henceforth the navy 
crew capably handled the boat and made a 
praiseworthy record. .* 

Night maneuvers in Narragansett Bay 
demonstrated the Holland's agility in evading 
observation by watchful naval scouts. A boat 
selected for attack was the United States tug 
Leyden, attached to the Torpedo Station. It 
took up a position at the entrance of the bay, 
and the Holland set out to approach close 
enough to launch a torpedo before being dis¬ 
covered. In the first test the tug spied her in 
the darkness, but only because she was show¬ 
ing her side lights. Yet even these were not 
easy to discern on the dark water. The real 
test began with the extinguishing of the side 
lights. Several searchlights played over the 
water, and although the Holland was running 
awash she could not be seen until within tor¬ 
pedo range, when she hailed the tug. On an¬ 
other occasion, the cruiser New York , while at 
anchor in the bay with all her searchlights 
showing, was equally unable to find the Hol¬ 
land until the boat came within ISO feet of her. 
Even the big searchlight of the Torpedo Sta¬ 
tion, one of the best in the naval service, never 
succeeded in picking her up at night. 


168 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

The time soon came when we regretfully 
said good-by to our little craft. We had had 
many ups and downs in her and had expended 
untold efforts for more than three years in 
making her justify our confidence in her in¬ 
ventor's genius. For a number of years she 
was used in the training of officers and men of 
the navy for submarine duty. To-day she is 
resting in the Museum of Peaceful Arts in the 
Bronx, a monument to the life work of John 
P. Holland. 


CHAPTER XIII 


The Holland a costly boat.—The Adder class.—Un¬ 
favorable comments on submarines from Admirals 
O’Neil and Melville.—The Fulton as a model for im¬ 
proving the new boats.—Obstacles in building her 
through enforced adherence to government specifica¬ 
tions.—Theory vs. practice.—Misfit materials and 
equipment.—Speed difficulties.—Foreign naval observ¬ 
ers.—Endurance test to prove that a crew can live for 
long periods under water.—Pressure of heavy tide 
ends test.—The gale and flood which swept Peconic 
Bay, with the Fulton safe underneath. 


The Holland passed to the navy for the sum 
of $150,000; she had cost her builders 
$236,615, due to interminable changes in prac¬ 
tice and equipment, many of them almost 
finicky as to detail, but vital in their aggregate 
effect on the boat's operation. We recognized 
that the costly capital expenditure involved in 
making the boat as practicable as our then 
knowledge of under-water science had de¬ 
veloped was an inevitable initial outlay. But 
further official encouragement beyond the 
Holland's acquisition was needed if we were 
to pursue our campaign of making the subma¬ 
rine an effective naval auxiliary. While by 
no means assured that the Holland had 
emerged from the speculative stage of experi¬ 
ment, the navy authorities conceded that they 


170 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

could not disregard our position and so took 
the risk of confiding to us a contract for the 
construction of six additional submarines of 
an improved type for $170,000 each. 

These were of the Adder class, named from 
one of them, the others being the Mocassin, 
Porpoise, Shark, Grampus, and Pike . The 
first four were built at Lewis Nixon’s shipyard 
at Elizabethport, New Jersey, the last two at 
the Union Iron Works, San Francisco. The 
Navy Department’s attitude to their enterprise 
found expression in comments by Admiral 
Charles O’Neil, chief of the Bureau of Ord¬ 
nance, and Admiral George W. Melville, 
Naval Engineer-in-chief. Both were members 
of the board of construction which passed 
upon the Holland . 

“I recognize the fact,” Admiral O’Neil de¬ 
clared, “that favorable comments have been 
made concerning the Holland by several emi¬ 
nent naval officers, for whose judgment I en¬ 
tertain the highest respect, but after a careful 
analysis of all the information that is obtain¬ 
able concerning her, I am at a loss to under¬ 
stand upon what such opinions are based, as 
the Holland has never shown the ability to do 
anything more than run at a slow speed on the 
surface and make submerged runs of short 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 171 

duration at a much slower rate of speed, al¬ 
ways in carefully selected localities and under 
most favorable conditions. This is the sum 
total of her performances, which I am unable 
to accept as sufficient evidence that such boats 
are useful and efficient instruments for naval 
purposes/’ 

‘The boats,” wrote Admiral Melville, allud¬ 
ing to the Adder class, “are either valuable or 
they are worthless. From the time that the 
Senate and House Naval committees look with 
favor on these boats, there will be a decreased 
construction of battleships; and the action of 
Congress in striking out of the naval appro¬ 
priation bill of 1901 all authorization for bat¬ 
tleships and cruisers can certainly, in part, be 
traced to the belief that the submarine pos¬ 
sesses many of the qualities claimed by its adr 
vocates. It is, therefore, high time that those 
who believe in the efficiency of the submarine 
should be compelled to make good a few of 
their promises. It is easy for them to tell of 
the vast amount of concentrated energy pos¬ 
sessed by these boats, and of the ease with 
which this energy can be directed against an 
enemy. Concentrated energy, however, is 
usually a very awkward thing to deal with, 
even on a battleship. Many details as to its 


172 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

handling will have to be solved before it can 
be efficiently used in a submarine. To be able 
to fire one torpedo from a submarine boat, 
after hours and even days of preparation, is 
far from promising work; nor has the craft 
proved more satisfactory as regards stability, 
speed, and maneuvering qualities. . . . How¬ 
ever sincere the builders of submarines may 
be, these men must of necessity give ex parte 
testimony as to the worth of their own 
designs.” 

We were loath to let the Adder class, which 
were of a uniform design, come from their 
stocks without the guidance of preliminary 
experiments to show how an improved type of 
the Holland, as these were to be, would turn 
out. Our knowledge of the Holland we did 
not deem sufficient for the purpose, though the 
new class followed her general design. Hence 
we determined first to build a boat of our own, 
the Fulton, as a duplicate of the Adder class, 
and for use solely to determine by tests the 
possibilities of her sister vessels. What new 
methods we discovered from handling the 
Fulton would therefore be incorporated in 
their equipment. In common with Admirals 
O’Neil and Melville, the Holland interests 
were anxious to substantiate their claims as 
submarine pioneers. 




LAUNCHING OF 9UBMARINE TARPON 


SUBMARINE ON RAILWAY 


“a” CLASS 










- * 

































> 









































































. 





















OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 173 

The Fulton was built at the Nixon shipyard 
in the summer of 1901. In dock she had her 
vicissitudes, and more outside. Her features 
bear recording, as her lines and equipment 
represented those of the boats which later 
formed the first American submarine fleet. 
She had a length of 63 feet, a diameter of 11 
feet, and displaced 120 tons when submerged. 
A single screw drove her, with motive power 
furnished by four-cylinder Otto gasoline en¬ 
gines of 160 brake h. p. and by electrical 
motors of 70 h. p. The gasoline engine was 
used for surface propulsion, and also for 
charging the batteries, which were drawn 
upon by the electrical motor when the vessel 
was submerged. When the oil engines were 
charging the batteries, the motor was used as 
a dynamo. A single torpedo tube constituted 
the armament, with a provision for Whitehead 
torpedoes. For operating her vertical rudder 
and two horizontal diving rudders, the boat 
had separate engines, worked by air at a fifty- 
pound pressure supplied from six storage 
flasks, which carried air at a pressure of 2,500 
pounds to the,square inch. A reducing valve 
effected the necessary reduction of pressure. 
The boat had a conning tower twenty-one 
inches in diameter, protected by four inches of 


armor. 


174 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

As a needed working forerunner of the 
Adder class, the Fulton's construction was 
pushed to enable us to run trials and obtain 
the desired data for successfully completing 
her sister vessels, which were already in frame 
and plated at their respective shipyards. 
Numerous changes found necessary impeded 
her progress. We had a chief engineer who, 
though a brilliant technician, had no practical 
'experience in submarine construction. Theories, 
apparently, should prevail in a new field of 
navigation. Much of the mechanism designed 
to go into the boat was left out, and most of 
the mechanism left in was changed. This not 
only delayed completion, but entailed great ex¬ 
pense. The Fulton's construction was not 
troublesome in so far as it related to our con¬ 
tribution to her completion. The difficulty 
was that as a replica of the Adder class, built 
in advance of the others at the Nixon shipyard, 
the boat in her fundamentals had to follow 
government specifications, and labored under 
the disadvantage of having technicians not of 
our choosing. She was not a naval vessel, but 
an experimental understudy intended for our 
operation, yet, as in the case of the Plunger, 
she was not our own child in certain essential 
features. 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 175 

In our original uniform design for these 
boats, the main motor and engine were con¬ 
nected to the tail shaft through a chain of 
spur gears and a jaw clutch. These gears and 
clutches were made of cast iron, despite my 
strong objections, grounded upon experience, 
to the use of this material. Our chief engineer 
insisted that cast iron was suitable for the 
gears and clutches and my protests failed to 
change his view. An occasion came after the 
Fulton's launching when I sent the chief ma¬ 
chinist into the boat to start her engines. 
Presently he reappeared with blood streaming 
down his face. A large chunk of cast iron he 
brought with him told the story. One of the 
gears had broken and a detached piece struck 
him in the face, causing a serious abrasion. 
Thereupon we determined to have no more 
cast-iron gears or clutches. The change cost 
thousands of dollars and considerable delay. 

The same material was selected in making 
the Kingston valves, which were used for ad¬ 
mitting water ballast from the sea to our 
tanks. The body of these valves was inside 
the boat proper. If one should break it would 
mean the sinking of the boat and loss of the 
crew. These cast-iron valves I refused to 
operate, and firmly withheld submerging the 


176 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

boat until safeguards had been provided to 
protect us from their liability to break. This 
imperative change also caused additional ex¬ 
pense and delay. 

Another foolish adoption was the steering 
and diving engines to operate with compressed 
air. In our experience with the old Holland 
they had proved to be useless. Although built 
for the Adder class, they were never installed. 
Yet another undesired feature built for the 
boat was an auxiliary pump of large capacity 
and high pressure, operated by a 10 h. p. 
motor, as an addition to our regular pumping 
equipment. It took up about half of our avail¬ 
able space in the boat (which at best was very 
small) and I condemned it as unnecessary. 
The equipment was purchased but never in¬ 
stalled. 

The boats were designed to operate in either 
salt or fresh water. In common with the 
Adder class, the Fulton was to carry five tor¬ 
pedoes, with the necessary compensating tanks. 
In our first trials we found the Fulton would 
not float all the equipment. We had to leave 
out the two after torpedoes, nearly half the air 
flasks, and block off part of our main ballast 
tanks. All this meant more expense and delay 
which could have been avoided had our theo- 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 177 

retical technicians been guided by the practical 
experience of our organized forces. 

Early in July the boat was far enough ad¬ 
vanced to leave her dock and was towed to our 
New Suffolk testing station, where our plant 
had been greatly enlarged. There we had a 
crew of competent mechanics at hand to com¬ 
plete her, and within a month we were able to 
make our first run. She was designed for a 
speed of seven knots on the surface, but the 
best we could get was less than six. Either 
grave mistakes had been made in calculating 
her speed, or her propeller was inefficient. 
We decided that the propeller was at fault and 
enlisted the services of several propeller ex¬ 
perts, from whom we obtained three designs, 
which we built and tested, and selected the one 
that gave us the required speed. We tried 
every known method to increase this speed. 
Meantime, the Elizabethport shipyard had 
managed to turn out the Adder, which was 
brought to our testing station late in the sum¬ 
mer, so that we could adapt her to advanta¬ 
geous changes we made in the Fulton. 

Not being a United States war craft, the 
Fulton was available for exhibition before 
representatives of foreign navies who were 
attracted by the submarine as a weapon of de- 


178 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

fense. We made surface and submerged runs 
for several experts sent by the Dutch govern¬ 
ment, one of whom was Admiral Tadema, 
chief of their Naval Staff. Commander Bek- 
lemisheff of the Russian navy was another 
visitor who went under water with us. I little 
thought at the time that later he would be in 
command of the Fulton and that I would be 
instructing him in his own country. 

A familiar question was revived over the 
Fulton by the doubting Thomases. How long 
could a crew live in a submarine sealed up on 
the amount of air usually carried ? Our busi¬ 
ness was to remove misgivings, and we put the 
boat under water in an endurance test of 
fifteen hours late in November. The amount 
of air the boat carried was about thirty cubic 
feet at 2,500 pounds pressure per square inch. 
The actual cubical contents of the hull proper 
was about 2,500 cubic feet. In addition to our 
own crew we took down Captain John Lowe, 
U. S. N., and Lieutenant Arthur McArthur, 
U. S. N. The boat had been thoroughly 
cleaned, bilges washed out, and everything put 
in shipshape. Provision for two meals were 
laid in to cover fifteen hours immersion, in¬ 
cluding a bottle of Scotch whisky. While some 
of us did not think this stimulant necessary, 
others deemed it important. 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 179 

The occasion was not one we would select for 
a holiday excursion. The night was dark and 
rainy and a strong northeast gale was blowing 
across Peconic Bay, our practice ground. 

We went under in a gathering storm at 
seven o’clock in the evening. Our crew were 
assigned to four-hour watches, and at ten 
o’clock all hands, except the watch, turned in. 
About every hour during the night Captain 
Lowe would wake up, inspect the boat, includ¬ 
ing the bottle of whisky and return to his 
berth. 

By six o’clock the next morning our depth 
gauges revealed that we were farther down in 
the water than we should be normally. We 
were resting on a hard sandy bottom and 
could not understand how the boat should be 
in deeper water than the bay’s known depth 
hereabout. The deadlights of the conning 
tower showed that the water, which we had 
found comparatively clear in the bay, was get¬ 
ting discolored by mud. Everyone on board 
held a different view of the cause. 

The change in the depth was due to an ab¬ 
normally high tide, which placed several more 
feet of water above the boat than there would 
be normally. I decided it was no place for us. 
At ten o’clock I entered the conning tower and 


180 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

gave orders to blow out ballast. The boat im¬ 
mediately shot to the surface. 

Looking out through the deadlights before 
opening the hatch, I discovered that we had 
come up under an overturned catboat, which 
was lying across our stern. The dock to which 
we were tied when we submerged had disap¬ 
peared. The tide had risen some six feet 
above maximum high water, swamping the 
dock and flooding the town of New Suffolk 
over an area of several hundred feet, including 
our plant, which was normally five feet above 
water. Our only way home was by a small 
boat rowed up the main street. 

The fiercest gale for forty years had swept 
over the bay while we were under water, but 
the Fulton neither rocked nor rolled or other¬ 
wise felt the violent disturbance on the sur¬ 
face. The muddy water about us furnished 
our only barometer of conditions overhead. 

Thus we kept six men beneath the waves 
fifteen hours. The only air we breathed was 
the atmosphere in the boat when we sub¬ 
merged. We had no need to draw on our re¬ 
serve supply. 

The test brought us hundreds of inquiring 
letters, the writers including chemists and 
college professors. Many frankly doubted the 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 181 

story published in the press that six men had 
lived fifteen hours on 2,500 cubic feet of free 
air. Some experts told us that it was impossi¬ 
ble for one man to live half that time under 
such breathing conditions. I am persuaded 
that these doubters suspected we had secret 
means of obtaining fresh air from the surface. 


CHAPTER XIV 


The Fulton sinks in dock.—Crew's escape through 
air pocket.—Patched up, she proves the submarine’s 
capacity for open-sea voyages.—Sets out for Chesa¬ 
peake capes from Brooklyn in heavy weather.—A 
crowded craft.—Life preservers as a bed on a torpedo 
tube.—Deck crew up to their necks in water.—Puts 
into Delaware Breakwater.—An interrupted breakfast. 
—Explosion, due to ignition of battery gas, blows a 
naval officer out of the conning tower like a cork.— 
Lacerated scalps and faces.—The shoes that landed at 
the bottom of a firkin filled with sugar.—Conduct of 
a coffee pot.—The Fulton out of commission. 


We were to proceed to Washington to give 
more exhibitions in the Potomac for the pur¬ 
pose of further stimulating official interest in 
our work. The Fulton was overhauled and 
meticulously groomed for this event, a labori¬ 
ous task that kept us working day and night. 
By the 1st of December she lay spick and span, 
primed for being put again on her mettle be¬ 
fore the powers that control appropriations— 
and then sank in the night. I was temporarily 
absent in New York when word came that she 
was lying at the bottom of the bay. There 
were three men in her, but they succeeded in 
getting out. Mildly expressed, this was dis¬ 
couraging, after our labor in putting her in 
condition. Wreckers were requisitioned and 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 183 

twenty-four hours after the Fulton was again 
on the surface, much the worse for her salt¬ 
water bath. 

It appeared that the workmen had had oc¬ 
casion to hoist up the stern of the boat with a 
crane, but in doing so left the main hatch open. 
During the operation the boat dropped, put¬ 
ting the hatch under water. The three men in 
the boat struggled to get out through the in- 
rushing water. Two of them succeeded. 
Finding afterward that their shipmate had not 
escaped, one of them returned to rescue him 
while the water still rushed through the hatch. 
Once inside, he seized his mate and succeeded 
in getting both their heads above water in an 
air pocket, a device provided for just this pur¬ 
pose. There they waited until the water ceased 
entering the hatch; then they maneuvered out 
of their air pocket and came to the surface. 

The Fulton’s electrical apparatus, which had 
taken months to install, was practically ruined, 
as were the storage batteries. The boat was 
temporarily patched up for her tests, our pur¬ 
pose being to complete her reconditioning and 
make permanent repairs afterward. The 
patching up was done with disastrous results. 

While her repairs were under way, British 
interest in submarines called me to England, 


184 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 
and it was April of 1902 before I returned to 
resume control of the exasperating Fulton . In 
my absence she had been placed in what we 
supposed was a good working condition, ready 
for the trip to Washington. Assured of this, 
we left New Suffolk on April 24th, late in the 
afternoon, tied up in Greenport for the night, 
ran down Long Island Sound the next morn¬ 
ing, and the following day reached South 
Brooklyn. 

Here we were called upon to overcome more 
skepticism regarding the powers of the subma¬ 
rine. Statements were made that while our 
boats might operate in harbors and still 
waters, they would be useless at sea. We 
thereupon made a submerged run out into the 
broad Atlantic from South Brooklyn, heading 
for Delaware Breakwater. We had as con¬ 
voy our own steam yacht, which carried our 
supplies. In addition, as the insurance com¬ 
panies compelled us to charter an ocean-going 
tug, we had the Storm King, which hailed 
from Boston. 

We first headed for the Scotland Lightship. 
A few miles to the southward of this light we 
stopped and prepared the boat for submerging. 
All the top hamper, such as the portable deck, 
ventilators, and guy lines, was stowed on our 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 185 

tender. Thus decks were cleared for the sub¬ 
merged run, which lasted about an hour. To 
us there was nothing untoward about this test, 
but it served its purpose in demonstrating that 
the boat could be operated with success in the 
open sea. Our portable gear was then re¬ 
placed for the coastwise run south. 

For this voyage we had a crew of eleven 
men, with three naval officers, two American 
and one Austrian, as observers, and supplies 
for about two weeks. In a boat the size of the 
Fulton fourteen men with supplies made a load 
which left little room for sleeping accommo¬ 
dation. The men who were not on watch had 
to curl up in any cavity they could find. My 
bunk was a few life preservers on top of the 
torpedo tube. 

Our course was laid for the Chesapeake 
capes in fine weather, with a light breeze blow¬ 
ing offshore, and no sea. Our cruising speed 
was only about six knots; hence our progress 
was slow, but the boat’s mechanism functioned 
without a hitch. 

In the night the wind shifted to the south¬ 
east, increasing toward morning to a small¬ 
sized gale. About 3 a. m. rain came with an 
increasing sea; at 4 a. m. the watch called me 
on deck, as the weather was getting worse. 


186 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

The boat in light condition had only a small 
amount of freeboard; the conning towers were 
low in the water, and a small sea would wash 
over it. I saw the necessity of battening 
everything down, leaving as the only opening 
a small ventilator which we needed to furnish 
air for the engines. 

On reaching the deck the sea was prac¬ 
tically up to my shoulders. The Storm King, 
thinking that we were making heavy weather 
and in a dangerous position, tried to come 
alongside and make a lee for us. I immedi¬ 
ately ordered her off. I had no fear of our 
little boat in the open sea with nothing but 
water around her, but the Storm King's close 
proximity might bring the two boats together 
and cause serious trouble. For the next few 
hours we made slow progress. The men on 
deck were up to their necks in water most of 
the time. 

The course we were taking for the Chesa¬ 
peake capes carried us some distance from 
Delaware Breakwater. About 9 a. m. we 
sighted the breakwater, our convoy some dis¬ 
tance in the lee. Chesapeake capes lay more 
than one hundred miles distant and there was 
no harbor intervening. So the breakwater, 
after the hours we had been wallowing in the 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 187 

sea, looked like home. There we hauled in 
and anchored back of the stone pile. Inside, 
the water was as smooth as glass. 

Wherever we made port our steam yacht 
also anchored, and we would tie up alongside 
her in order to have access to her accommoda¬ 
tions for our men. Inside the breakwater I 
signaled to stop our engine and waited until 
the yacht had anchored, so that I could tie the 
boat alongside. Three men were on deck, in¬ 
cluding myself, and eleven inside. 

Meantime, the men below decided to pre¬ 
pare breakfast. Our cooking was more or less 
of a camping job done on an electric stove. On 
one stove was our coffee pot, which held about 
two gallons; on another the men were boiling 
eggs. Some of them had already started their 
meal. 

While we drifted and waited for the yacht 
to anchor, with our engine running light, I 
heard on deck what sounded like a heavy ex¬ 
plosion some distance away. Just then one 
of the United States naval officers appeared 
halfway out of the conning tower trying to 
come on deck. As he carried a considerable 
avoirdupois, he fitted the conning tower very 
closely. He duly got on deck, but not by his 
own volition. He was blown from the con¬ 
ning tower like a cork. 


188 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

I realized then that the explosion was in¬ 
side the boat. We were helpless, and signaled 
the Storm King to come alongside and make 
fast, which she did. The first man who 
emerged from inside the boat was one of our 
own crew, whose condition was such that I 
thought he had only a few minutes to live. 
One side of his scalp was torn off and blood 
drenched his face, well mixed with the contents 
of a soft-boiled egg. The next man had a 
broken nose. The third’s face was deeply 
gashed and streamed with blood. The other 
eight men escaped injury. 

The explosion was due to the ignition of 
battery gas. It had lifted the main deck, where 
were located all our supplies. The deck was 
practically firewood. 

Before the mishap one of the United States 
officers had exchanged his shoes for sea boots. 
The discarded shoes lay on deck and vanished 
with the explosion. Later we found them in 
the bottom of a butter firkin which we had 
filled with sugar. The firkin was of the kind 
used for butter in a grocery and held five gal¬ 
lons. No one could explain how the shoes 
found their way into it underneath the sugar. 

Calling the roll produced a fourth injured 
man, who seemed more or less dazed. His 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 189 

impression was that a part of the engine had 
struck the crown of his head. An examina¬ 
tion showed that he was saturated with coffee, 
which revealed what had struck him. The 
steaming coffeepot on the stove had been 
blown up and landed topside down on his head. 

Our casualties did not prove to be serious 
except those which the Fulton sustained. She 
was put virtually out of commission. For the 
Washington tests she was replaced by her 
sister craft, the Adder, a government boat, 
which by now was almost finished. 


CHAPTER XV 


Holland and Great Britain.—Submarine devised to 
damage British sea power is adopted by the Ad¬ 
miralty.—Disbelief in the new sea weapon.—Trying 
out the boats at Barrow.—Admiralty unwillingly rec¬ 
ognizes necessity of an American crew.—Misgivings 
inexperienced British as to getting back after sub¬ 
merging.—Tests in the Irish Sea.—Careless discipline 
by British officers causes explosion.—The smoking 
peril.—Officially hoped that submarines would fail.— 
Navy resents their introduction. 

Foreign interest in our activities had, as 
early as 1899, attracted the attention of Great 
Britain. The little Holland was then ardu¬ 
ously feeling her way toward her utmost effi¬ 
ciency. Her achievements, withal imperfect 
enough—too imperfect, in the view of our 
Navy Department—had sufficed to animate 
the slow-moving mind of the British Admi¬ 
ralty. It was a furtive interest, officially kept 
very dark indeed, so much so that that body 
refused to acknowledge that the submarine 
merited serious consideration in the field of 
practical navalism. 

Holland himself devoted much of his ener¬ 
gies toward stimulating foreign consideration 
of submarines while I was demonstrating in 
American waters the practicality of each boat 
we produced. About this time he was in Eng- 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 191 
land in consultation with naval and shipbuild¬ 
ing officials. The humor of such a contact 
could not have been unrecognized by either 
party. The man who had set his heart on de¬ 
vising an instrument to cripple Great Britain’s 
sea power had seen the way open to introduc¬ 
ing his device into her navy, not as a destroy¬ 
ing foe, but as a protecting auxiliary. How¬ 
ever, the Fenian Ram of 1881 was veiled in 
the mists of oblivion, and the veil was not 
lifted. Had that strange craft been men¬ 
tioned, one could imagine Holland and the 
British Admiralty exchanging humorous 
glances. But there is no record of such an 
interchange. 

Great Britain was not disposed to depend on 
the experience of other powers for guidance 
in the adoption of submersibles. But the Ad¬ 
miralty quietly and leisurely weighed the 
whole question, taking two years to do so, 
meantime obtaining all the data available be¬ 
fore determining that an ounce of fact, ob¬ 
tained by its own experience, was worth a ton 
of theory derived from what other nations 
were doing. While lending a listening ear, it 
declined to attach an exaggerated importance 
to submarines. The prevailing official attitude 
was that Great Britain had no need of such 
boats. 


192 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

“If the development of the submarine had 
made any substantial progress,” wrote Ad¬ 
miral Melville (United States), “it is to be 
presumed that the British Admiralty would 
have utilized this craft long before now 
(1901). The British estimate of its useful¬ 
ness may be measured by the manner in which 
her naval writers refer to the boat.” 

This was an allusion to the remarks of a 
naval gold medalist of the Royal United Serv¬ 
ice Institution, whose views, the admiral said, 
were identical with those of most British naval 
officers: 

“Submarine boats are a confession of weak¬ 
ness and by no means to be recommended by 
our navy, whatever foreigners may think about 
them. Both the Americans and Spaniards 
were in possession of boats of this class during 
the late war (1898), but as neither attempted 
to make any use of them, we may perhaps be 
permitted to conclude that they did not think 
they were worth the trouble of transporting to 
the scene of action. 

“Although a very large number of a variety 
of types have at different times been invented 
and experimented with, the results of their 
trials, although often reported as eminently 
satisfactory, have never been such as to lead 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 193 

to their construction on any large scale. Their 
use, too, has been condemned for what now, 
perhaps, would be scoffed at as sentimental 
reasons. But it may be remembered that even 
Napoleon, who was not particularly troubled 
by scruples of this kind, refused to employ the 
fairly successful boat invented by the Ameri¬ 
can, Fulton, against the British fleet, while his 
admiral, Deeres, remarked that such craft were 
only fit for Algerines and pirates. France, 
however, has several in hand, probably more 
with a view of pleasing the fancy of the pub¬ 
lic than from any real expectation that they 
will be of any particular value to the navy.” 

The British naval estimates of 1901, how¬ 
ever, provided for the building of five experi¬ 
mental boats of the Holland type. The Ad¬ 
miralty, though deciding on this outlay, 
remained unconvinced of the submarine's 
utility, but apparently yielded to an outside 
demand that a few be constructed. 

“What the future of these boats may be in 
naval warfare,” the Admiralty reported, “can 
only be a matter of conjecture. Experiments 
with these boats will assist the Admiralty in 
assessing their true value. The question of 
their employment must be studied in all its de¬ 
velopments and their mechanism carefully 
watched in this country.” 


194 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

The boats, which were uniform in general 
features with the Adder class, were built by 
the firm of Vickers, Sons & Maxim, of Barrow- 
in-Furnace, Lancashire, who had acquired the 
sole rights of manufacturing the Holland sub¬ 
marines outside the United States. The boats 
were duly adopted after comprehensive tests, 
in which I shared as instructor. The Ad¬ 
miralty confined all their submarine work, 
both in experimental design and construction, 
to this firm. The arrangement involved 
secrecy, as the government required in their 
contracts that the firm should not undertake 
to build submarines for any other nation. 
Foreign powers were thus prevented from 
gaining the benefit of the research work and 
experimenting which the firm undertook in 
connection with the Holland boats. 

In face of the activity of rival inventors, the 
fates had decreed that the builder of the 
Fenian Ram should have the sole privilege of 
providing submarines for the British navy. 
The Admiralty's action in placing the order 
did not pass without comment in the House of 
Commons. “If we are to dabble in subma¬ 
rines," the government critics said in effect, 
“why favor the devices of Mr. John P. Hol¬ 
land of the U. S. A. ? Why not invite designs 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 195 

from other firms in competition ?” Mr. Ar- 
nold-Forster, Parliamentary Secretary to the 
Admiralty at the time, explained that when the 
decision to construct submarine boats was ar¬ 
rived at, only one type (the Holland) was then 
available for purchase. The right to build 
that type was in the hands of one firm, to whom 
it was necessary to entrust the work. 

The arrangement was due to the fact that 
Isaac L. Rice, president of the Holland Com¬ 
pany, who made the contract with the Ad¬ 
miralty, wanted to save the expense and risks 
of transportation involved in building the 
boats in America, and therefore looked about 
for a British shipbuilding firm who could pro¬ 
duce the craft. 

Our part in the contract was to furnish plans 
and a superintending engineer to overlook the 
construction of the boats, conduct trials, and 
train an English crew. The engineer we sent 
(one of our own staff) was a naval architect 
and engine designer, an Englishman by birth 
who had never become naturalized. It was an 
ideal assignment from the Admiralty’s view¬ 
point, but events were to show that their enter¬ 
prise could make no headway without direct 
American guidance, despite the engineer’s in¬ 
timate acquaintance with the construction and 


196 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 
operation of the old Holland . At the time, 
however, we had agreed that the training of a 
crew in England could be undertaken without 
the help of an American personnel. 

Preliminary trials were run at Barrow in the 
port’s wet docks, which are huge basins sur¬ 
rounded by stone bulkheads, with a depth of 
water of about five fathoms. On this part of 
the English coast the rise and fall of the tide 
is about thirty feet. At high water these 
basins were allowed to fill and with the gates 
closed the depth of five fathoms was main¬ 
tained. This depth proved sufficient for oper¬ 
ating the boats, but the length and breadth of 
the basins were inadequate, and the com¬ 
mander of the submarine had to guard against 
colliding with bulkheads. He did not succeed 
in doing so. 

On the first trial run our engineer, who was 
in command, had a crew of English sailors who 
had never been in a submarine. They lacked 
confidence in the work and were more or less 
skeptical of the outcome of under-water navi¬ 
gation. The boat promptly crashed into a 
bulkhead while submerged, and arose with a 
damaged bow and a shaken crew. This ex¬ 
perience convinced the builders that more ex¬ 
perienced men were needed for the trials. 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 197 

Hence came a cablegram to New York asking 
that I be sent to England by the first steamer 
to undertake them, and I was requested by the 
company to sail at once. 

In my judgment this did not meet the situa¬ 
tion. Where was I to get my crew ? The an¬ 
swer was, “The English will furnish all the 
men you need.” I told our president that my 
willingness to run the trials was contingent on 
taking my own crew. I refused to go under 
any other conditions. My men had served 
under me for a number of years and knew the 
operation of the Holland boats to the last de¬ 
tail. Each was an expert in his own line. I 
did not propose to go to a strange country and 
operate submarines, which at best were an un¬ 
known quantity, without their efficient co¬ 
operation. 

The dangers and uncertainties of submarine 
navigation were not realized by learners. Our 
early experiments with the Holland had taught 
us that these dangers were manifold and not 
to be trifled with. An inapt crew of English 
rookies might readily cause the loss of the boat 
and their own lives. 

The British Admiralty refused to assent to 
an American crew operating the boat. They 
wanted only an American instructor—myself. 


198 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 
Exchanges of cablegrams resulted in their 
yielding, but only after they were persuaded 
that my decision was final, and they agreed 
loathfully to let me bring my own crew. 

We were in Barrow by the middle of Feb¬ 
ruary, 1902. Two of the submarines were in 
the water, ready for trials. An inspection re¬ 
vealed that, although they had been built 
according to the original plan, they lacked cer¬ 
tain features we had later found essential in 
American operation. These changes were of 
vital importance, and I urged that they be 
made before we attempted any trials. ' The 
outlook meant a long delay that discouraged 
the builders and the Admiralty, as well as the 
officers in charge of the work. But they agreed 
to let me have a free hand, and placed the onus 
on me for the success of the boat’s trials after 
the changes had been made. The Holland 
Company thus virtually fathered the British 
boats through my insistence on imperative 
changes as its representative, and the work 
was undertaken, lasting twenty-four hours a 
day for several weeks, including Sundays. By 
the end of March the first boat was ready for 
trial. 

We endeavored to keep our runs secret, but 
we found British newspaper men quite as en- 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 199 

terprising as their American confreres and 
more than equal to the dark designs of a reti¬ 
cent Admiralty. Early on the day of our first 
run the townspeople, informed by the press of 
our purpose, assembled along our course. Sub¬ 
marines then were as much a curiosity in Eng¬ 
land as elsewhere. As in the United States, 
we rarely escaped an interested audience. 

Several English members of our crew, 
which included a number of naval officers as¬ 
signed to us for instruction, had grave mis¬ 
givings as to whether we would come to the 
surface again after submerging. They wanted 
to know what we would do if the boat became 
stalled under water. Ought we not to take 
plenty of food and fresh water to safeguard 
against such an emergency? Our own men, 
who were at home in Davy Jones's locker, 
naturally did not share the discomfort and un¬ 
certainty which worried the Englishmen. 

It was really an anxious moment for our 
raw recruits when, on the afternoon of March 
31st, our boat slowly sank until only the top 
of the conning tower was visible. The order I 
gave for full speed ahead, and then for diving, 
made them more anxious. The boat slowly 
took an angle of five degrees and disappeared. 
Two minutes later we came up for observa- 


200 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 
tion. The ordeal was over; they had tasted 
first blood of Neptune under the waves. 

Several more dives followed of two minutes' 
duration; then up to the surface again with 
blown-out water ballast and an opened con¬ 
ning tower. Thousands of people crowded the 
line of our course and greeted us with wild 
cheering each time we emerged. 

When we tied up at the dock for the day 
after such mild immersions, which extended 
for an hour and a half, the English members 
of our crew seemed the happiest men alive. 
They had once more set foot on dry land and 
the worst was over. 

A few days later came the official trials of 
the first boat in the Irish Sea, consisting of a 
four-mile run and quick dives of short dura¬ 
tion. In order to open the gates of the Barrow 
basins, it was necessary to leave for the open 
sea at high water, which came early in the 
morning. Accordingly, we left our dock at 
5.30 a. m., arriving at our testing range in the 
Irish Sea an hour later. The trials were car¬ 
ried through as scheduled and we were back 
again by 9.45 a. m. Thereupon the boat was 
accepted by the Admiralty and became the first 
submarine to join the British navy. A like 
success having been achieved by the second 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 201 

boat, the Admiralty decided that the officers 
and men who had been under our instruction 
were competent to handle the boats without 
further guidance from us. 

There is always a heavy ground swell run¬ 
ning in the Irish Sea. But we encountered no 
trouble in maintaining our depth and in steer¬ 
ing our course. The depths varied from five 
feet to thirty-five feet. We steered courses of 
two and one-half miles without coming to the 
surface, moving solely by compass, and strik¬ 
ing targets 150 feet long at the end of the two 
and one-half miles in face of the ground swell, 
which in the Irish Sea is felt much deeper than 
in other waters. We did not feel the sea; 
neither a ground swell nor a heavy sea affected 
our operations. When we submerged we 
steered a much straighter course than we could 
with a surface boat, because we had not the 
wind to contend with; we had only the cur¬ 
rents. 

We impressed upon the English officers in 
charge the vital importance of extreme care 
and vigilance, especially in the rigid closing of 
every opening, such as ventilators, hatches, 
and valves before submerging, and in guarding 
against leaks from the gasoline equipment. 

The warning was needed. On my first in- 


202 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

spection of the boats after taking charge, I 
found many gasoline leaks, more or less oil in 
the bilges, and the atmosphere saturated with 
gasoline fumes. Yet in spite of this obvious 
danger of ignition, the English officers and 
workmen were allowed to smoke in the boats 
at will. 

My order forbidding smoking inside the 
boat was unwillingly respected while I re¬ 
mained in charge, but after our departure for 
th$ United States the British officers returned 
to their lax methods in controlling the boats. 
Less than a month later a gasoline explosion 
in the first boat placed five men in the hospital. 
This was only one of many similar mishaps 
which befell British submarines in their early 
operations. The only evidence found pointing 
to the cause of the explosion, as far as I know, 
was the bowl of a clay pipe freshly filled with 
tobacco. Some workman was apparently 
about to light his pipe and the match ignited 
the gasoline fumes. 

The Admiralty was henceforth committed 
to submarine construction, primarily for coast 
defense, and British naval men assigned to 
undersea boats duly became reconciled to 
“potted air” and the inevitable risks condition¬ 
ing their navigation. The pressure of public 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 203 

opinion, disturbed by our progress, as well as 
French enterprise, had forced the British au¬ 
thorities, as one press writer commented, “to 
show some justifications for the faith that is in 
them, which is really no faith at all. ,, The 
Holland type at the time had no active com¬ 
petitor beyond the products of ardent French 
inventors, the construction of whose boats was 
solely confined to France and guarded by the 
government. 

Officially it was hoped in Great Britain that 
the submarine would be discredited by the 
Admiralty experiments. No aspersion was 
aimed at the Holland type, but rather at the 
fundamental principle of submarine naviga¬ 
tion. Therefore our mission on the Irish Sea 
trials to prove the worth of Holland’s ideas 
involved also a vindication of the activities of 
every inventor experimenting in the submarine 
field. 

The wish was father to the thought in the 
British hope of submarine failure. It had been 
so from the first. The navy did not want the 
submarine to be justified. In those days the 
fear that British naval supremacy would be 
jeopardized by the submarine, as Holland had 
long predicted, is an old story; then it was a 
new terror. Great Britain had staked her all 


204 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

on the battleship, on its capacity to steam 
through storm and fog, to blockade the enemy 
in his ports, or to fight him on the high seas. 
The navy resented any innovation by a new 
arm that would revolutionize naval tactics. 
But the submarine had its way. 


CHAPTER XVI 


Uncle Sam has a submarine fleet at last.—Perform¬ 
ances of the Adder and Moccasin. —Sand-bar dangers. 

—Testing the Grampus and Pike in the pitch-dark 
waters of San Francisco Bay.—The reconditioned 
Fulton and the Lake boat Protector have competing 
trials before a naval board at Newport.—Structural 
differences of the two types.—Target shooting and a 
twelve-hour submergence.—Both boats sold to Russia. 

A landmark in American submarine de- 
velopment came in the course of 1903, when 
the Adder, Moccasin, Porpoise, Shark, Gram¬ 
pus, Pike, and the reconstructed Plunger were 
delivered to the Navy Department after the 
customary tests. Uncle Sam's submarine fleet 
was in being at last. Each boat realized our 
expectations from the improvements we had 
devised and incorporated in them after our 
enlightening experience of the working of 
their elder sister ship, the Fulton. 

The Adder's trials on the Potomac in the 
early summer of 1903 were daily events. Each 
day she made from ten to one hundred sub¬ 
merged runs with her quota of guests, serving 
as a novel excursion boat for interested Sena¬ 
tors, House representatives, and government 
officials. The submarine was still very much 


206 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 
in its infancy, and official Washington more 
than ever needed careful cultivation. 

An early obstacle we had to overcome in 
operating the Adder was her inability to 
operate in fresh water. Though she had been 
designed for both fresh and salt water, some 
error had been made in determining her trim 
for inshore runs. We found such a variation 
of calculation had been made by the builders 
in adapting her to fresh water that we had to 
remove a portion of our permanent weights 
aft and make other changes in order to pro¬ 
ceed. 

Later tests of the Adder , as well as of the 
Moccasin on our Long Island ground, enabled 
us to accumulate a new stock of experience 
which bore fruit in the more elaborate boats 
that followed them. One run we made under 
water, scheduled for three hours without com¬ 
ing to the surface, brought us in contact with 
sand bars. Our trial course limited our opera¬ 
tions to a distance of not more than four or 
five miles in any direction, and in order to stay 
submerged for the time required we were 
obliged to cover twenty-one knots. This en¬ 
tailed a run in one direction, then turning 
around and running in another direction. 
Several bars and points of land intervened, 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 207 

which we were liable to hit, for lack of the 
long-wanted periscope. Up to now we still ran 
on time and compass only. 

I had actually fun for two hours and fifty- 
seven minutes when, by some misreckoning, I 
struck one of the numerous sand bars. We 
were in only about three fathoms of water, 
while on either side of the bar were ten or 
twelve fathoms. Immediately on hitting the 
bar I ordered the boat to the surface. With 
diving rudder hard up, the boat slid over the 
bar, but the suction of the propeller held the 
stern on the bottom, causing her to slide into 
deep water, her nose pointed up. 

A prominent naval officer we had with us 
was frightened, as he could not understand 
why the boat should be going down when her 
nose was pointed up, and she had a hard-rising 
rudder. 

We ran in this condition for a few seconds, 
meanwhile sinking deeper. It was necessary 
to blow out one of our ballast tanks before we 
could raise the boat out of the mud. As soon 
as she started for the surface we refilled the 
tank, but the conning tower was exposed five 
seconds before we could disappear to complete 
our three-hour submerged run. As our per¬ 
formance lacked only three minutes of the 


208 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 
scheduled time, the Board of Inspection con¬ 
ceded us a full rating. 

Tests with the Grampus and Pike in San 
Francisco Bay encountered the usual initial 
difficulties attending the operation of craft 
fresh from the shipyard. In addition we were 
handicapped by strong tides, which imperilled 
our marker buoys, and mud made the water 
impenetrable and dark as night. On the 
Atlantic coast daylight penetrated our dead¬ 
lights to a depth of five fathoms. In San 
Francisco Bay the daylight ended a foot be¬ 
neath the surface. 

The trials were a successful repetition of 
those conducted on the east coast, barring the 
loss of a torpedo, but were hampered by the 
presence of a large number of transports 
anchored at one end of the course and shoal 
water at the other. Minute calculations of 
speed and the strength of the tide were needful 
to avert colliding with the transports or 
stranding among the shoals. 

Our attention was next directed to recondi¬ 
tioning the Fulton, which, as before recounted, 
had been disabled by a battery explosion. We 
had sold her to Russia, but our primary object 
in putting her into shipshape was to fit her for 
rigid tests to meet the requirements for build- 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 209 

ing further submarines with a new appropria¬ 
tion for $1,000,000 Congress had made. The 
boats were to be of American design and con¬ 
struction, and the best in the field. Only two 
craft were available for the test, our Fulton 
and the Protector, the latter built by Simon 
Lake. Like the Fulton, the Protector had been 
purchased by Russia. Hence, neither boat was 
destined for our navy and could only be util¬ 
ized as working craft to demonstrate the 
future product of competing builders. 

The Lake boat, designed for war purposes, 
had been evolved from the inventor’s early 
Argonaut type earlier mentioned, which was 
intended solely for the peaceful purpose of 
locating wrecks. The craft now developed 
was 70 feet long over all, 11 feet wide, and 
had a submerged displacement of 170 tons. 
She had gasoline engines actuated by twin 
screws, as against the single screw of the Ful¬ 
ton. Her steaming radius on the surface was 
1,500 miles, her surface speed 11 knots, and 
her submerged speed 7 knots. Her air tubes 
were charged at a pressure of 2,000 pounds, 
capable of supplying sufficient air to enable a 
crew of six men to remain submerged for 60 
hours. She had three eighteen-inch torpedo 
tubes, one on each side of the bow and one in 
the stern. 


210 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

Her inventor’s method of operation de¬ 
parted widely from ours. There were three 
methods of submerging the Lake type—either 
by admitting water ballast and so destroying 
the buoyancy, or by the use of hydroplanes, or 
by dropping two heavy anchors, which were 
lowered by wire cables. The hydroplanes 
were so placed amidships that their downward 
tendency, which overcame the boat’s buoyancy 
when she moved ahead, was balanced, enabling 
the vessel to descend with her longitudinal axis 
parallel with the water surface. The heavy 
anchors were dropped till they reached the sea 
bed, and, the boat’s buoyancy being sufficiently 
decreased, it could be pulled down to the 
anchors by suitable mechanism. Thus the boat 
could be anchored at any desired depth within 
range of her capacity. In raising her the 
anchors were hauled in, and sufficient water 
was discharged from the ballast tanks by 
means of compressed air or pumps. The 
anchors could be cast adrift, as well as a large 
section of the boat’s keel, in case of accident 
Under water, and the lightened boat could thus 
come to the surface. 

The Lake boat’s fuel was not stored in the 
hull, as in the Holland type, but in a super¬ 
structure built on the top of the hull proper. 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 211 

This method of storing the oil overhead was 
adopted because of the great danger—as we 
found—in having the tanks inside the main 
structure, where the gasoline, being a very- 
volatile fluid, readily gave off a highly in¬ 
flammable gas. But as gasoline was absolutely 
necessary in the boat while oil engines pro¬ 
vided the means of propulsion, the danger of 
ignition could not be wholly removed, no mat¬ 
ter where the fuel was stored. A tank always 
secure from leakage of fumes was not impos¬ 
sible, but difficult of realization. Carrying the 
gasoline outside the hull certainly reduced 
somewhat one element of danger in submarine 
navigation, but the arrangement did not con¬ 
tribute to the Lake type’s success in navy tests 
with a later boat. 

The sea bed could be explored by divers, 
who had means of entering or leaving the ves¬ 
sel while submerged by a door opening through 
the bottom in a separate compartment for¬ 
ward. Compressed air prevented the water 
from entering the compartment when this door 
was opened for the diver’s egress and return. 
Captain Lake in this type made the sea bed 
his objective. He held that traveling along it 
was the best method of progression in a sub¬ 
marine. Underneath the boat a couple of 


212 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

wheels projected, some three feet in diameter, 
mounted on short arms. When not in use they 
could be housed in trunks, like the sliding reels 
and centerboards of sailing craft. The wheels 
were placed on the fore-and-aft line, one in 
front of the other, so that the boat proceeded 
as a bicycle, being almost buoyant. Little 
weight burdened the wheels, and the boat 
maintained an upright position. 

The Protector was ready for the fray. We 
had looked forward to having competitive 
tests between her and the Fulton on Narra- 
gansett Bay in the summer of 1903, but our 
boat was not ready to compete before the 
spring of the following year. The Protector 
underwent her test alone before a naval board, 
and was later shipped to Russia, whither the 
Fulton was bound after a similar trial. 
Neither test was fruitful of results, despite 
official approval of the Fulton's performance. 
A more productive contest between the Lake 
and the Holland types for the $1,000,000 ap¬ 
propriation was to come later. 

The Fulton's trials at Newport before the 
Board of Inspection and Survey lasted several 
days. Their main feature was a difficult tor¬ 
pedo attack, We had a target fixed by means 
of two small boats anchored three hundred 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 213 


feet apart to represent the length of a small 
warship, and toward it we were to start at a 
distance of ten miles, running submerged the 
entire distance, and using only our periscope 
(the periscope had arrived at last) for ob¬ 
servation. The efficiency of the run was de¬ 
termined by the infrequency with which we 
exposed our periscope. The two boats lay 
about a mile eastward of Block Island, while 
our starting point of submergence was near 
Brenton’s Reef. We had to take our course 
from the chart and ran the risk of error in 
direction through an inaccurate compass. 
There was a considerable sea, which impeded 
our making swift observations through the 
periscope in the briefest possible time required. 

Running on time and compass only, a small 
flag on a signal mast showing above water to 
indicate our movements to observers, we cov¬ 
ered about five miles before making our first 
observation, when the periscope was exposed 
only for a few seconds. The heavy sea ob¬ 
scured our target. After another three miles 
we made a second observation, but still failed 
to pick up the target. Nearer by another mile, 
we at last sighted the target, with our course 
off about twenty-five yards. We corrected 
our course and submerged for the last time. 


214 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

Owing to the heavy sea and the danger of los¬ 
ing our torpedo had we fired one, the board 
allowed us to run between the two small boats 
which indicated the location of our target, as¬ 
suming that, had we fired the torpedo, we 
would have hit it. We actually had gone 
through the target by about half a mile. A 
photograph taken of our signal flag as we 
passed through showed the Fulton in the cen¬ 
ter of the distance between the two small 
boats. 

In a second trial we were supposed to have 
had our periscope shot away, obliging us to 
make for the target without this instrument. 
To do so we came to the surface, went back 
five miles, and again submerged, headed for 
the target. The only method of observation 
now was by coming to the surface and looking 
out through our conning tower deadlights. On 
this run we rose to the surface twice, exposing 
our conning tower for only a few seconds, and 
struck the target almost at the same point as in 
the first run. This trial was pronounced suc¬ 
cessful. 

Finally we submerged the boat with a full 
crew for twelve hours to demonstrate that 
men could live in a submarine for a long period 
without inconvenience. We had done it be- 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 215 

fore, but this matter of existing under water 
was always uppermost as a desired proof of 
successful submarine navigation. A naval of¬ 
ficer we had with us, representing the Board of 
Inspection, said before we submerged that he 
was very fussy about the air in his sleeping 
apartment at night, and usually kept one of 
his windows open. We suggested that he re¬ 
frain from insisting on this requirement, as 
we did not recommend open windows while 
submerged in a submarine. He had an excel¬ 
lent night’s rest, enduring confinement from 
8:30 p. m. to 8:30 a. m. without ill effects, like 
the rest of us. We did not change the air in 
the boat until we had been down eleven and 
one-half hours, and our only reason for doing 
so at all was to demonstrate our facilities for 
revitalizing the air whenever necessary. 

The Fulton was then prepared for shipment 
to Russia, an operation by no means simple in 
view of the enforcement of our neutrality laws 
in the Russo-Japanese War, which was then 
raging. 


CHAPTER XVII 


Smuggling the Fulton to Kronstadt to elude Ameri¬ 
can neutrality laws, owing to Russo-Japanese War.— 
Cargo camouflaged in clearance papers.—Towing out 
the Fulton in the night without lights to a waiting 
freighter off Montauk Point.—A destroyer appears and 
vanishes.—Stealthy work of shipping the boat in inky 
darkness by a floating derrick.—Customs officials 
discover they have cleared a contraband cargo.—The 
Fulton becomes the Madam .—My movements are 
watched in following her to Kronstadt to instruct 
Russian crew.—Preparing the Rodjesvensky fleet de¬ 
lays trials.—The Madam's 100-mile run to trial ground 
in the Gulf of Finland.—Floating workshop comes to 
grief.—Isolated Bjorka.—Russian satisfaction with 
tests.—Dismantling the Madam for journey to Vladi¬ 
vostok.—Awaits the appearance of the Tsar to in¬ 
spect her.—The Tsar considers the convenience of an 
American citizen.—The Madam on patrol duty at 
Vladivostok. 


The Lake boat Protector had already been 
dispatched to Russia, and press comment 
thereon, in view of American neutrality, made 
us dubious of similar success in delivering the 
Fulton overseas as an ordinary shipment. We 
did not desire public strictures on our action, 
nor did we intend that Russia should be de¬ 
prived of the boat (which was hers subject to 
the usual tests) because of the war. Our first 
plan was to place her openly on the deck of a 
tramp steamer for transport direct to Kron¬ 
stadt, but we decided not to take the risk. The 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 217 

only chance of getting the boat abroad was to 
smuggle her out of the country, and that in¬ 
volved an equal risk of her confiscation as 
contraband if any naval prowler discovered 

us. 

The Fulton was back at our New Suffolk 
proving station on Long Island Sound. A few 
miles off Montauk Point lay a vessel we had 
chartered, which had proceeded there from 
Newport News, where she had loaded coal for 
ballast. Another craft we requisitioned, a 
floating derrick from New York, was stationed 
at a point on the Sound abreast of Long 
Island. 

An initial difficulty to surmount was obtain¬ 
ing clearance papers. It was necessary to get 
them from the nearest point of departure (in 
this case Sag Harbor), and, for our purpose, 
before the vessel was actually loaded. We did 
not want to deposit our submarine on her deck, 
and then, should the customs official’s suspi¬ 
cions be aroused, have our clearance papers 
refused. 

On June 28th our own tender steamed out 
from New Suffolk to Montauk Point, took off 
the steamer’s captain, and conveyed him to the 
customhouse at Sag Harbor. His was prob¬ 
ably the first vessel which had applied for 


218 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

clearance papers from that port in thirty 
years. The customs official there could not 
readily produce the needful blanks, and he was 
not quite sure just how to fill them out when 
he found them. The difficulty was duly over¬ 
come, the cargo successfully camouflaged, and 
the clearance papers obtained. 

The stage was now set for delivering the 
goods. The skipper returned to his ship with 
orders to proceed at eleven o’clock that night 
to a point about the middle of Gardiners Bay. 
The captain of the derrick craft received like 
instructions. At our proving station, about 
twelve miles distant, everything was in readi¬ 
ness for towing the Fulton out to the ship. 
Our movements were covered. No one in the 
town knew that anything unusual was afoot. 
Our crew had been sworn to secrecy and told 
nothing. 

At the usual time of retiring for the night 
all hands turned in, but not to sleep. At ten 
o’clock they turned out again in the dark. No 
lights, either in their homes or outside, dis¬ 
closed their movements. Our tugboat lay 
alongside the Fulton, not a light showing. At 
eleven o’clock the lines were made fast to the 
Fulton, and slowly and quietly the tender 
pulled out of her berth and got under way. At 


' 



RUSSIAN SUBMARINE TAKEN IN THE GULF OF FINLAND, I 904 



LOADING “FULTON” ON TRAMP STEAMER FOR SHIPMENT TO 

RUSSIA, 1904 


























































































ft 















































































































OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 219 


about twelve-thirty we were in Gardiners Bay. 

We had some trouble in locating the waiting 
steamer and lighter in the dark waters, as they, 
too, had no lights. Blind maneuvering finally 
landed the Fulton alongside the derrick, and 
the task of slinging her began. The operation 
required hours of hard labor in the dark, only 
an occasional lantern, used when absolutely 
necessary, betraying our presence. What 
seemed to be flame erupting from the funnels 
of a destroyer lit the darkness some miles dis¬ 
tant, the craft evidently headed in our direc¬ 
tion. We feared our lantern had exposed our 
nefarious operations, and instantly came 
visions of heavy fines and imprisonment. But 
we had eluded naval sleuths before, and we did 
so now. The destroyer disappeared and wel¬ 
come darkness shielded us again. 

It was 3:30 a. m. before the Fulton could be 
lifted. The creaking chains and the purring 
of the motors operating the derrick broke the 
stillness and scared us by their noise. Every 
man held his breath. Slowly the submarine, a 
weight of eighty tons, left the water and hung 
suspended in midair. In ten minutes she was 
swung over the deck of the outgoing ship and 
lowered into cradles previously prepared. 
There she was fastened down and swathed in 


220 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

canvas to guard against discovery from prying 
eyes should the ship chance to be accosted by 
other craft en route. 

We headed out to sea beyond the three-mile 
limit, where safety lay, and I returned ashore 
by our tender, which had been escorting the 
steamer out. Two members of the crew re¬ 
mained on board to overlook the Fulton and 
her unloading at destination. 

She was four days out, well beyond hearing, 
before the suspicion dawned on the customs 
officials at Sag Harbor that they had cleared a 
contraband cargo. But this was not the whole 
story. In preparing the submarine for ship¬ 
ment we had to reduce her weight by remov¬ 
ing the storage battery, and this equipment we 
succeeded in disguising by boxing up and 
shipping on another steamer. 

The voyage was, fortunately, without inci¬ 
dent. The captain had sealed orders which 
instructed him to stop at Reval. There fur¬ 
ther instructions awaited him, telling him to 
land at Kronstadt and unload. Some ten days 
after leaving Montauk Point the Fulton was 
dropped into that Russian harbor and towed 
to Petrograd. 

Thereafter the Fulton was no more. In fact, 
she ceased to exist immediately after leaving 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 221 

American waters. She became the Madam 
until she entered the service of the Russian 
navy. 

Later, with a special crew, I followed the 
Madam to Petrograd. Our commission was 
to put her in operation, run trials, and train a 
Russian crew to handle her. The vessel I 
sailed on, the Kronprinz, did not contain my 
name on her passenger list. It was a small 
matter, but we desired to forestall any ques¬ 
tions that might arise regarding our rendering 
assistance to the Russian government in time 
of war, and so my departure was veiled in 
secrecy, like the Fulton's . 

On board I found myself under the sur¬ 
veillance of a strange passenger. The nature 
of my mission would make any one suspicious 
of being shadowed, and I watched him as much 
as he did me. When the vessel stopped to land 
passengers at Cherbourg, my observer was 
evidently prepared to leave the ship if I did, 
but, as I did not, he also remained. 

We landed at Bremerhaven on August 2d, 
stayed the night at Bremen, and went on to 
Berlin the next day. The man who watched 
me was always near. I was unable to escape 
him even while sight-seeing on the Unter-den- 
Linden. He disappeared the next morning, 


222 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

when we entrained for Petrograd. Either his 
trail of me had grown cold or he decided that 
my mission in Europe was not that he sus¬ 
pected. 

The Madam awaited us at the Nevsky 
Dockyard. One of the first persons I met 
there was Baron Fersen, lately an attache of 
the Russian Embassy in the United States, 
who had made several runs in the Madam in 
American waters. He was to command a new 
cruiser then being finished by the Nevsky Yard 
for Admiral Rodjesvensky’s Baltic fleet. He 
spoke hopefully of the work in store for him in 
the Far East, but I understand that in the 
battle of the Sea of Japan his cruiser fled and 
was later beached on the Island of Sakhalin 
and blown up. 

Just now the entire Russian navy was ab¬ 
sorbed in preparing the Rodjesvensky fleet for 
its ill-fated expedition, and for this reason the 
Navy Department, although m great need of 
the Madam, could not give us the necessary 
facilities to put her through her official trials. 

In our preliminary work we were impeded 
by lack of needed material. We could get little 
co-operation from the Russian workmen, con¬ 
tact with whom was further handicapped by 
the barrier of language, though this obstacle 
was overcome by an interpreter. 



LAUNCHING SUBMARINE IN RUSSIA, IQO.| 









OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 223 

The Madam was duly ready for trials, and 
then we searched for a suitable course, which 
we found in a small bay close to Petrograd. 
This water served for preliminary runs, but 
was not suited for official trials. Naval pre¬ 
occupation with the Baltic fleet delayed these 
until early in October. Then we were notified 
that the trials would take place in the Gulf of 
Finland, about one hundred miles from Petro¬ 
grad, near the little Finnish town of Bjorko, 
where we were to make our headquarters. 

We did not depend on what accommodations 
the town might have available for us. A small 
steamer was chartered to house our own crew 
and tend the Madam during her trials. We 
also purchased a small canal boat and fitted her 
up as a workshop and storehouse. This boat 
carried all our supplies and provided quarters 
for our Russian crew. 

In moving out from Petrograd for our trial 
grounds the steamer towed the canal boat, 
while the Madam made the run under her own 
power. It was a day journey, begun before 
dawn in perfect weather. The afternoon 
brought a high wind and heavy sea. We 
noticed that our canal boat in tow of the 
steamer was making bad weather, and that the 
men on her were constantly at the pumps, in- 


224 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

dicating that she was leaking badly. However, 
it survived the journey to Bjorko, where we 
dropped anchor. Shortly after dark we tied 
up in a good harbor. During the night I was 
reminded of our leaking boat by the watch, 
who called me and warned that she could not 
keep afloat. All hands thereupon turned out, 
and what we could save of our supplies (of 
which we had many) was transferred to the 
steamer. The boat was then towed across the 
harbor and beached. This was the last of our 
little workshop. 

Daylight the next morning revealed a Rus¬ 
sian cruiser a short distance from us and 
alongside her the Lake submarine Protector, 
which was also there for trials. 

We found Bjorko a town isolated from the 
world. The nearest railroad station was thirty 
miles and there were only two mails a week. 
Besides a post and telegraph office, it had a few 
primitive houses and a church. The people 
were glad to mingle with Americans. Though 
only a hundred miles from Petrograd, they 
could not understand a word of Russian. 
Only Finnish was spoken, but fortunately for 
us our interpreter knew both tongues. As it 
was Sunday, all hands attended church, as was 
customary on the first Sabbath we spent in a 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 225 


strange place, but none of us were qualified to 
pass upon the quality of the sermon, and the 
interpreter was not consulted on this point. 

The Holland boats had long since passed 
the stage when decisive official trials involved 
a risk of failure to demonstrate their capaci¬ 
ties. These Russian tests, conducted on Octo¬ 
ber 12th, consisted of a surface run of a mile, 
a submerged run of the same distance, and the 
firing of a torpedo. They presented no dif¬ 
ficulty and were pronounced successful. The 
torpedo trial was particularly gratifying to our 
naval judges, though the projectile promptly 
lost itself and was not found until several 
months later. The training of the Russian 
crew, which embraced two officers and eight 
men, occupied another ten days, by which time 
they decided they had received sufficient in¬ 
struction and we brought the Madam back to 
Petrograd. 

Our allotted part in turning over the boat 
was finished, but further aid was sought from 
us to transport her to Vladivostok by rail. Her 
conning tower had to be removed to afford safe 
passage through tunnels and bridges of the 
Siberian Railroad. Hence I remained to see 
that the boat was properly stowed on a freight 
car for her long overland trip over the Tsar’s 


226 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 
dominions. By a flattering offer the govern¬ 
ment tried to induce me to accompany the 
Madam, but as the war with Japan was then at 
its height, and Vladivostok a center of hostili¬ 
ties, I decided that New York City was safer. 

I was, in fact, eager to leave Russia, and re¬ 
quested that the boat be prepared for shipment 
promptly. It was a land of delays. The Tsar 
desired to inspect the boat before she was dis¬ 
mantled and the work was deferred pending 
his appearance. After waiting patiently for 
several days, I informed the Russian officials 
that I had arranged to leave Petrograd on 
October 29th, and could let nothing interfere 
with my program. The same afternoon the 
Tsar came and inspected the boat, and I had 
the privilege of meeting him. The Tsar of all 
the Russias had considered the convenience of 
an American citizen. 

The Madam was dismantled and sent on her 
journey to Vladivostok, where she was reas¬ 
sembled and went on patrol duty outside that 
port. Her officers were bent on sinking any 
Japanese craft in sight, but there is no record 
that they succeeded in doing so. The boat re¬ 
mained out on patrol several days at a time, 
only returning to port at intervals for supplies. 
On one occasion, while entering the harbor, 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 227 

she was mistaken for a Japanese torpedo boat 
by the fort gunners, who opened fire on her. 
None of the shots took effect. She immedi¬ 
ately submerged, staying on the bottom until 
night, and entered under the cover of dark¬ 
ness. After the war with Japan nothing more 
was heard of the Madam. 


CHAPTER XVIII 


Development of submarine-boat equipment.—Need 
of bigger engines.—A stolen inspection of German 
submarines at Kiel.—Germany’s tardy adoption of 
submersibles influenced by British action.—Growth of 
Holland type in Europe.—Search for the perfect peri¬ 
scope.—Italy’s submarines.—The Squalo, with water¬ 
tight compartments, continues to run submerged with 
a ton of water in her engine room.—A French gaso¬ 
line engine for submerged operation.—France’s sub¬ 
marines.—Identical with Holland’s in general princi¬ 
ples.—Submarine building for American navy retarded 
by government indecision.—Holland boats for Japan. 


Submarine development had inspired Euro¬ 
pean technicians to exercise their ingenuity in 
contriving improved engines, periscopes, and 
other mechanical devices. We needed the best 
equipment in sight, and it was part of my mis¬ 
sion abroad to examine their product. 

Up to this time the largest engine used was 
of 160 h. p. and of the gasoline type. The 
submarine’s immediate future called for the 
development of engines of greater capacity 
than that. For several months we had been 
studying the field without finding any efficient 
engines larger than those we were using. We 
had been in communication with a Russian in¬ 
ventor, named Loutski, who had designed two 
engines with a capacity of 300 h. p. each, 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 229 

which were being built at Kiel. I visited Kiel, 
primarily to inspect these engines, but I was 
also anxious to see some of the German sub¬ 
marines then under construction there. 

In order to reach the plant where the en¬ 
gines were, I crossed the harbor in a motor 
launch and observed several of the submarines 
in the water under military guard. I ordered 
the launch to run alongside one of the boats to 
get a close view of the hull. A German soldier 
evidently tried to tell me that no one was al¬ 
lowed near the boat, but as I did not know 
German, he made me understand his meaning 
by the use of his gun. My presence was not 
wanted. His demonstration was perfectly 
clear, but before retreating I succeeded in 
making a careful scrutiny of the submarine 
which in later years was to fill the world with 
fear and trembling. 

Germany had looked on indifferently at the 
development of submersibles, but the attention 
bestowed on them by the United States, France, 
and Great Britain finally forced her to change 
her view. Admiral von Tirpitz, her naval 
chief, for long held an unfavorable opinion of 
undersea navigation, and had announced that 
the German navy would not initiate the con¬ 
struction of any submarines. The attitude of 


230 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

Austria was as hostile, to judge by an authen¬ 
tic deliverance made by a naval officer at the 
Austrial Military Casino in 1901, when he 
contended that so far there was little prospect 
of the submarine playing an important part in 
naval warfare, and, anyway, Austria-Hungary 
preferred to await results of further experi¬ 
ments before adopting such vessels. 

Probably it was Great Britain’s acceptance 
of the Holland type that hastened Germany’s 
change of front. Any new device adopted by 
the British Admiralty instantly became, by the 
very nature of Anglo-German relations, a 
matter of importance to Germany’s naval pol¬ 
icy. Yet the British naval lords, as I have 
before indicated, were hardly serious about 
their venture. They ordered Holland boats 
without even seeing the type, only knowing of 
it by description, and their requirements were 
much less exacting than those of our own 
Navy Department. They did not look for 
great speed, nor even accuracy regarding the 
firing of the torpedo. All they wanted was to 
see the boat operate under water and to be as¬ 
sured that she could be handled by a British 
crew. 

The success of the Holland boats produced 
by their British contractors led to an extension 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 231 

of licenses to build the type among European 
firms in order to save expense and the risk of 
transportation involved in constructing them 
in America. Thus in Germany the boats came 
to be constructed by the Deutsche Parsons 
Turbinia Company, then by Krupps; in Austria 
by the Whitehead Company; in Holland by 
“De Schelde ,, ; and in Russia by the Nevsky 
Works, in addition to Vickers Sons & Maxim, 
in England. In some cases our designs were 
closely followed under the supervision of 
American engineers. In others modifications 
were introduced by the licensees working in 
co-operation with the admiralties of the re¬ 
spective nations for whom the boats were 
being built. 

Holland himself always held that alone of 
all the countries who adopted his submarine, 
Germany and Japan built boats that repre¬ 
sented his mature conceptions. Certainly Ger¬ 
many’s submarine record in the World War 
told its own story of the efficiency of her 
U-boats, not only as destructive weapons, but 
in the great navigating radius they could 
undertake without emerging to the surface. 

A search for the perfect periscope took me 
from Germany to Florence, where I examined 
the products of one of the largest optical com- 


232 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

panies in Italy. We had adopted periscopes, 
but the device was still in its infancy and more 
or less crude. Though a number of concerns 
were attempting to make them, the day had 
not yet come for the perfected type used so 
tragically in the World War. 

Italy was unobtrusively experimenting with 
her first submarine, the Delfino, built in 1889. 
Originally this boat had a speed of five knots 
on the surface, and only two knots submerged. 
To enable her to sink on an even keel, and, in 
fact, control her submergence, she was fitted 
with a couple of propellers set in vertical tubes 
running through the boat, something after the 
plan adopted by Nordenfeldt in a boat he built 
for Russia before that country adopted the 
Holland type. Among further changes she 
was also fitted with a superstructure resem¬ 
bling that later installed on the American and 
British Hollands. The result was an increased 
surface speed to eight knots and more than six 
knots under water. 

The new Delfino became the groundwork for 
enlarged boats of the Glauco type, built by 
Cesare Laurenti, which took a creditable part 
in the Italian naval maneuvers of 1906. They 
ran from Venice to Taranto without convoy 
under their own power, submerging to depths 



INTERIOR OF SUBMARINE, LOOKING FORWARD 



SUBMARINE RUNNING FULL SPEED SUBMERGED. TWO PERISCOPES 

SHOWING 


/ 















































































































































































































OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 233 

of from thirty-six to sixty-six feet and at¬ 
tacked anchored vessels guarded by a large 
flotilla of torpedo craft. 

Their interior was distinctive in being di¬ 
vided into eight separate water-tight compart¬ 
ments, so that the engine room would be 
hermetically sealed and cut off from the re¬ 
maining divisions, thus preventing heat and 
gases permeating to other parts of the boat 
when submerged. The subdivisioning proved 
a decisive element of safety for one of the 
boats, the Squalo, during the maneuvers. She 
continued to run submerged despite a ton of 
water in her engine room, acquired through a 
defective valve of the water jacket of the 
motors. Our own Shark lost her reserve 
bouyancy on one occasion because of a break in 
her engine exhaust valve and narrowly escaped 
sinking. Only a few pounds of water had 
seeped into the vessel, yet it was enough to im¬ 
peril her. The Italians were also forward in 
developing the even-keel method of submer¬ 
sion after a brief preparation in trimming 
from the surface condition. Our boats sub¬ 
merged on the diving principle at this time at 
an angle of five degrees until the desired 
depth was reached, but great care and skill had 
to be exercised by the operator at the horizon- 


234 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

tal rudder. Apparently the Italian boats ran 
submerged with a change of longitudinal trim 
of not more than one to two degrees at the 
most. The developed Italian craft in the 
World War period acquitted themselves well 
in patrol work and in their attacks on Austrian 
naval vessels. 

A French inventor’s design of a gasoline 
engine of the closed cycle type, intended to op¬ 
erate in a submarine while submerged, next 
drew me to Paris as part of my itinerary. I 
was skeptical of his success. Our only meth¬ 
od of propelling boats under water was by 
storage battery and electric motor. It was 
impossible to operate gasoline engines below 
the surface, owing to lack of air for combus¬ 
tion. The Frenchman claimed to have over¬ 
come this, and we had taken the risk of order¬ 
ing two of his engines, which were then being 
constructed in a suburb of Paris. I spent sev¬ 
eral days examining them. Like numerous 
other inventions, they proved a failure. No 
one has yet been able to operate an engine of 
this type undersea without a suitable amount 
of air, which cannot be obtained in a sub¬ 
merged submarine. 

Little was revealed of the status of French 
submarines and the extent to which the Min- 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 235 

istry of Marine was experimenting with new 
devices. The government had successfully 
drawn a veil of secrecy over what they had 
done with their boats. Even our own Bureau 
of Steam Engineering, which was reputed to 
be better informed regarding developments in 
foreign navies, lacked knowledge of French 
plans and practice. Probably the British Ad¬ 
miralty knew less. France’s naval program, 
however, showed that she was looking farther 
ahead than the United States and Great Brit¬ 
ain. It authorized the building of forty-four 
submarines between 1900 and 1905, and en¬ 
larged this list to sixty-eight boats for com¬ 
pletion before 1906. At first they were not 
intended to have a great navigating radius, 
their purpose being rather to defend seaports, 
whither they could be transported or towed. 
In contrast with Great Britain’s submarine 
fleet of ten boats, which she had in 1903, and 
the seven boats possessed by the United States, 
France’s enterprise at this period made her the 
most advanced nation in the world in sub¬ 
marine construction. 

Underwater navigation had seized the 
French imagination. Two boats constructed 
for the navy were actually paid for by popular 
subscription through the stimulating enter- 


236 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

prise of the Paris Matin. As the people pre¬ 
sented the nation with these boats, it was 
caustically assumed that the Admiralty was 
forced to proceed with a submarine program 
through public pressure. “No evidence can be 
found,” wrote Admiral Melville (United 
States), who disbelieved in the submarine, 
“that a popular subscription was needed to 
build either a battleship, armored cruiser, pro¬ 
tected cruiser, or torpedo boat; in the construc¬ 
tion of these practical fighting machines, the 
French Admiralty officials required no spur¬ 
ring from the general populace . . . that 

must of necessity be unacquainted with the 
essential features of an innovation in naval 
construction.” 

The most notable of the French submarines 
of the time was Laubeuf’s Marvel , launched in 
1899, whose hull had double skins, the inter¬ 
vening spaces being entirely water-filled when 
the craft submerged. Though independently 
worked out, the designs of French inventors 
were identical with Holland’s as to general 
principles, and approached each other in main 
features, as Lieutenant Lawrence Y. Spear 
pointed out, allowing, of course, for the differ¬ 
ent aims of the designers. At the time of my 
visit (1904) France sought boats that should 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 237 

be both defensive and offensive, and developed 
them in displacement, adopting great length in 
proportion to beam with double hull and large 
tank capacity. Her possible enemy was with¬ 
in easy striking distance, and offered vulner¬ 
able points in the form of large ports and ar¬ 
senals. It is to be noted, however, that, de¬ 
spite France's progressiveness in submarine 
construction, she found little use for her boats 
when the great test came in the World War. 

After a flying visit to the Netherlands to in¬ 
spect a Holland boat under construction for 
the Dutch government at Vlissingen, I realized 
that I had been absent from the United States 
for several months. I wondered how the sub¬ 
marine situation was faring at home in view of 
the government contract of $1,000,000, the 
award of which was pending when I left. As¬ 
suming that it had already been given to the 
only plant— our own— which had so far met 
our navy's requirements, I was eager to return 
and take further part in the work to which I 
was devoted. On returning, however, I found 
that the government had not made any award, 
and there was no immediate prospect of our 
building further submarines for the navy. 

The only work that occupied the Holland 
plant, at New Suffolk, was the building of five 


238 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

boats for Japan. These craft were of the 
Adder class; and had been temporarily erected, 
then dismantled and shipped for completion in 
a Japanese navy yard. Meantime our large 
corps of experts, for lack of government 
orders, continued their development work, un¬ 
deterred by discouragement. We all believed 
in the successful outcome of our aims, and 
though our financial condition might be low 
our enthusiasm ran high. 

It was my lot to be withdrawn again from 
taking part in the development work. Early 
in 1905 I was assigned to proceed to Japan to 
supervise the completion of the boats we had 
shipped there, conduct trials, and train a Jap¬ 
anese crew to handle them. 


CHAPTER XIX 


A Pacific journey to Japan under war conditions— 
Contraband on liner.—At Midway Island.—Fear of the 
Russian fleet.—Yokohama.—Holland submarines at 
Yokosuka dockyard.—Japanese hospitality.—Navy eager 
for submarine operations off Vladivostok.—Expedi¬ 
tious preparations and trials of boats.—No lost motion. 
—Peace balks submarine enthusiasts.—Japanese naval 
officers quick to learn and faithfully follow instruc¬ 
tions.—Loss of a Holland boat with all hands.—Dead 
commander’s story of tragedy found in the conning 
tower on raising of craft.—A naval banquet in honor 
of the American submarine experts who taught the 
Japanese undersea navigation. 


The Russo-Japanese conflict approached its 
crest when I sailed from San Francisco on the 
Pacific Mail liner Manchuria for Yokohama 
via Honolulu in the middle of April, 1905. 
The vessel was laden with war munitions, and 
the appearance of myself and associates 
among her passengers had drawn spacious 
comments from the San Francisco papers 
more than hinting that our mission to Japan 
violated American neutrality. We abated 
suspicions by stopping off at Honolulu, appar¬ 
ently as tourists in search of diversion. The 
captain, in view of his war cargo, did not dare 
to enter the harbor, and a tender took us 
ashore. We waited quietly at Honolulu for 


240 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

the next vessel eastward, thereby throwing the 
alert newsmen off the scent. 

The Korea of the same line duly entered 
the harbor bound for the Far East, and we 
continued our journey on her. We suspected 
that this ship was also loaded with the contra¬ 
band of war. At any rate, the owners were in 
some trepidation regarding the movements of 
the Russian fleet, which had left the Baltic on 
its circuitous trip to the Orient, several months 
before, and they were taking precautions 
against capture. The captain (a young Eng¬ 
lishman experiencing his first command of a 
large passenger ship) had orders to stop at the 
island of Midway, about 1,200 miles from 
Honolulu, where a cable station is located. 
There he was to receive instructions either to 
proceed or to return to Honolulu. 

If the Russian fleet had reached a latitude 
near enough to endanger his ship, there was no 
doubt of his course. The prospect of fleeing 
back to Hawaiian waters with a Russian war¬ 
ship in pursuit was not a pleasant one for 
many of the passengers. 

The night before we reached Midway Island 
there was a perceptible slowing down of the 
engines. The captain informed us in expla¬ 
nation that had he maintained full speed dur- 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 241 


ing the night he would arrive at the island be¬ 
fore daybreak, and as Midway had no lights 
and was only eight feet above water, he did not 
want to run over it without knowing it. Soon 
after daylight we sighted the island, and the 
vessel anchored outside. 

The people of the island were always hun¬ 
gry for news and reading matter, regardless 
of its nature or age. A launch sent ashore for 
orders was accordingly laden with piles of dis¬ 
carded newspapers and magazines, which the 
passengers collected, so that the craft resem¬ 
bled a portable newsstand. Their isle being 
off the regular route of steamers, the people 
had no communication with the outside world, 
except by cable, for months at a time. When 
we were there the inhabitants numbered only 
thirty men and one woman, with a few sheep. 

The orders received by the captain were 
to go ahead. The whereabouts of the Rus¬ 
sian fleet had not been determined, and the 
owners were willing to run the risk of land¬ 
ing the ship's cargo in Japan. 

When near the 180th meridian an argu¬ 
ment arose at breakfast among the passen¬ 
gers as to when we would cross it. An el¬ 
derly lady asked the captain how we would 
know. He told her that if she observed 


242 l THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

closely she would be aware of a slight jar 
to the ship at about 8.30 that morning. That 
would mean we were crossing the meridian. 
The lady's curiosity was satisfied, but whether 
she felt this jar we never knew. 

The meridian was crossed on a Saturday, 
and Sunday was therefore dropped. We had 
on board a large number of missionaries who 
strongly objected to losing a Sabbath. Why 
not lose some other day? The captain had to 
assure them that this disposal of Sunday 
could not be avoided and they must make the 
best of the deprivation. On the meridian the 
days had to take their chance. It was a ques¬ 
tion of first come, first served, and Sunday 
happened to be the first comer. 

About two days before we reached Yoko¬ 
hama we were in waters where there appeared 
some danger of encountering the Russian fleet. 
The captain forbade all lights at night; there 
were no running lights nor deck lights, and 
the portholes of every cabin were carefully 
covered. Passengers were anxious to know 
what the captain would do if a warship ap¬ 
peared in the ofling. He told them that he 
would give it a clean pair of heels and that any 
pursuer would need a speed of better than 
twenty knots in order to overtake him. Com- 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 243 

pared with the ordeals many liners underwent 
during the World War our situation, the 
dangers of which turned out to be wholly 
imaginary, was trivial to the last degree, but 
we were living in days when the prospect of 
wholesale destruction of mercantile craft was 
unthinkable. 

Frightened passengers spent the last night 
on deck before we reached Yokohama. They 
were sure we would meet the Russian fleet. 
If the captain attempted to escape we would 
surely be shot up and sunk. The Russian 
fleet at the time was really several hundred 
miles away. A few days later came the battle 
of the Sea of Japan and the Tsar's feared 
squadrons were no more. 

We came within sight of Yokohama on May 
30th. Cape King, at the end of the long pen¬ 
insula that shelters the enchanting Yeddo Bay, 
showed through a line of purple cliffs; then 
rose terraced hills, green with rice and wheat, 
and, later in the season, golden with grain or 
stubble. Fleets of square-rigged fishing boats 
drifted by, their crews clad in the loose, flap¬ 
ping gowns and blue cotton head towels worn 
by Japanese coolies. 

At night Cape King's welcome beacon was 
succeeded by Hanonsaki's lantern; across the 


244 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

bay shone Sagami’s bright light, then sparkled 
the myriad of flashes from the Yokosuka dock 
(our submarine headquarters), and last, the 
red ball of the lightship glowed, marking the 
edge of the shoal, a mile outside the bund, or 
sea wall, of Yokohama. The lightship runs 
up its signal flag if there is a United States 
man-of-war in the harbor, and two guns are 
fired as a signal that the American mail has 
arrived. 

Yokohama disappoints the traveler after 
the splendid panorama of Yeddo Bay. The 
bund, or sea wall, with its clubhouses, hotels, 
and residence frontings, is not Oriental 
enough to be picturesque. As one of our 
prominent writers has said, “It is too Euro¬ 
pean to be Japanese, and too Japanese to be 
European.” 

The waterfront is a creditable contrast to 
some of our untidy American docks. There 
were fleets of freighters and war vessels, ugly 
pink and red canal steamers, brigs and other 
sailing vessels, but these craft were far out¬ 
numbered by the schools of sampans that in¬ 
stantly surround arriving mail ships. Steam 
launches serve as mail wagons and hotel omni¬ 
buses. They puff and whistle at the gangway 
before the buoy is reached, and boatmen keep 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 245 

up a steady whiz-whiz to the stroke of their 
crooked, wabbling oars as they scull in and 
out. 

The Yokosuka Dockyard, where our sub¬ 
marines were under construction, is about 
twenty miles from Yokohama and one of the 
most important of Japan’s naval stations. 
The boats were well under way when we ar¬ 
rived there, and were being rushed to com¬ 
pletion by night and day shifts. Having a 
war on their hands, the Japanese were anxious 
to put the boats in action. 

An acquaintance with the Japanese officers 
assigned to the boats was an agreeable ex¬ 
perience. Their chief desire was to enter¬ 
tain us. We had to impress on them that we 
were there for business, not for pleasure, but 
we could not resist the pressure of the hospi¬ 
table commander, who invited us to take tea 
with him and his staff at a small teahouse near 
the yard. This was our introduction to Jap¬ 
anese customs. Incidentally, we had been 
warned that to be successful in Nipponese 
society one’s stockings must always be without 
holes. This proved to be timely information 
in view of the social obligation imposed on us 
of removing our shoes at various functions we 
later attended. 


246 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

We obtained living quarters at a small hotel 
in the old town of Kamakura, some miles dis¬ 
tant from Yokosuka, which lacked accom¬ 
modations suitable for Americans. The Ka¬ 
makura hotel was conducted by Japanese on 
European methods during the summer. Its 
staff was entirely composed of girls, and in all 
our travels we had never found more efficient 
attendants. It is true that their ways were 
not our ways. In fact, it took us some time to 
become accustomed to their habits. Japanese 
ideas of modesty differ widely from American 
standards, but we duly surmounted the diffi¬ 
culty and adjusted our viewpoint to the cus¬ 
toms of the country. 

The Battle of the Sea of Japan had just been 
fought and won, but the disappearance of 
Rodjestvensky’s fleet had not depleted Russia 
of war vessels. The Japanese saw immediate 
work for at least two submarines off Vladi¬ 
vostok, and were eager to have the boats ready 
for transport to the harbor there. 

Toward the close of June we made a surface 
run in Tokio Bay with one of these boats, 
which thus became the first submarine oper¬ 
ated in the Japanese navy. When a sub¬ 
merged run was later made we had a full crew 
of Japanese naval officers in addition to our 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 247 

own crew of six men. These officers were to 
be trained to operate the boat in actual service. 

The boat was ready for official trials with 
its native crew by July 22d and I so notified 
the commandant of the navy yard. Unlike 
our experience with the Russian Navy Depart¬ 
ment, to say nothing of our own, there was no 
delay. In war Japan's watchword was 
dispatch. My advice was sent on a Saturday 
afternoon, and that evening official word came 
from the commandant that the board of in¬ 
spection had been appointed and the trials 
would begin the next morning. I demurred 
to running trials on a Sunday, and we agreed 
to hold them the following day. 

The trials occupied two days and fulfilled 
requirements. The board of inspection imme¬ 
diately left for Tokio, and the following morn¬ 
ing reported to me that the boat was accepted. 
When could she be delivered? At once, was 
my answer. The craft was ready except for 
checking up certain spare parts. In less than 
two hours all material had been delivered, the 
boat's flag hoisted, and lines cast off, and she 
put out to sea in commission, with a full Jap¬ 
anese crew and no Americans. 

The speed with which trials and delivery 
had been carried out, contrasted with the dil- 


248 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

atory naval procedure we had encountered in 
the United States, deeply impressed us. There 
was no red tape and no lost motion. The Jap¬ 
anese wanted the boats and they dispensed 
with wasting time dallying over technical de¬ 
tails which would not improve their efficiency. 
In our varied experience of preparing subma¬ 
rines for operation the world over we had 
found most governments disposed to attach an 
undue importance to small requirements, 
which at times were more apt to impair than 
help a boat’s performance, and only entailed 
needless delay and expense. 

The Japanese stayed at sea four days, dur¬ 
ing which they navigated the boat several 
hundred miles under her own power and with¬ 
out convoy. On returning they hitched her at 
the end of a tow line attached to a steam vessel 
and were off again. They spent several days 
thus trying out her towing qualities. Once 
more returning, they placed torpedoes aboard 
and all supplies necessary for a long cruise. 
This time she was to be on the warpath—and 
then peace was declared. 

A more disappointed group of men I never 
beheld. They had planned to take the boat to 
Vladivostok and clean up the Russian ships 
there, and that, no doubt, they would readily 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 249 

have achieved had the war lasted another two 
weeks. 

The Japanese people did not want peace, and 
resented the active share the Americans had 
taken in ending hostilities. In Yokohama, 
where I had occasion to spend some days, I 
found the relations between Japanese and 
Americans much strained from this cause. 
One morning I woke to find the city under 
martial law. During the night a mob had 
burned several American churches, and troops 
were called from Tokio. Street corners were 
held by squads of soldiers, their rifles loaded 
with ball cartridges. Americans had been 
warned to stay indoors and we were unable to 
leave our hotel for some days. 

The trials of the second boat and the train¬ 
ing of its crew duplicated our experience with 
the first boat. No hitch impeded the work. 
The Japanese naval officers were quick to 
master the intricacies of submarine naviga¬ 
tion. They were diligent in following instruc¬ 
tions and did nothing they were told not to do. 
They were admirable pupils and no teaching 
was lost on them. Especially did they note our 
explanation of why we did certain things and 
refrained from doing others. For example, 
while submerged in Tokio Bay we found a 


250 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

main hatch leaking. I immediately gave orders 
to blow out the main ballast tank and come to 
the surface. After the tank was empty we 
opened the hatch and detected the fault. The 
Japanese officers could not understand why we 
blew out so much ballast in order to open the 
hatch. I explained that if we had blown out 
only a small volume of ballast the vessel would 
have only a few inches of freeboard, and open¬ 
ing the hatch would then have endangered her, 
as a sudden swell might carry enough water 
through the hatch to sink the boat, owing to 
the small amount of buoyancy. With the main 
ballast tank quite empty we had several feet 
of freeboard, which safeguarded any risk of 
accident. The effective reaction on them of 
this demonstration of a danger easily incurred 
and as easily averted has more than assured 
me that henceforth no Japanese naval officer 
ever opened the hatch on a submarine without 
first providing for ample freeboard. I cite this 
instance to show their eager aptitude for fol¬ 
lowing instructions. 

Holland had meantime designed another 
type of boat, the plans for which were sold to 
Count Matsukato, who operated a shipyard at 
Kobe. The latter in turn contracted with the 
Japanese government to build two boats from 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 251 

these plans, and three American technicians of 
note superintended their construction. I was 
anxious to see these boats, but, despite my ac¬ 
quaintance with Lieutenant Ide, the Japanese 
officer in charge of the work for his govern¬ 
ment, red tape barred me from access to the 
Kobe Yard. The boats were duly launched 
and put in commission. 

In April, 1910, one of these boats was lost 
with Lieutenant Sakuma, its commander, and 
the crew of fourteen men, during maneuvers 
in Hiroshima Bay. Lieutenant Sakuma’s story 
of the tragedy lay in the conning tower when 
it was raised by a wrecking party from the 
cruiser Toyohashi. This sailor’s log, here¬ 
under quoted, recorded the creeping approach 
of a slow but certain death between 10 a. m. 
(after total immersion) and 12:40 p. m., the 
lingering ordeal thus lasting two hours and 
forty minutes. It was addressed to the Navy 
Department as a confidential report: 

Words of apology fail me for having sunk His 
Majesty’s submarine No. 6. My subordinates are killed 
by my fault, but it is with pride that I inform you that 
the crew to a man have discharged their duties as sailors 
should with the utmost coolness until their dying mo¬ 
ments. 

We now sacrifice our lives for the sake of our coun¬ 
try, but my fear is that the disaster will affect the future 


252 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

development of submarines. It .is therefore my hope 
that nothing will daunt your determination to study the 
submarine until it is a perfect machine, absolutely reli¬ 
able. We can then die without regret. 

It was while making a gasoline dive that the boat 
sank lower than was intended, and in our attempt to 
close the sluice the chain broke. We endeavored to stop 
the inrush of water with our hands, but too late, the 
water entered at the rear and the boat sank at an incline 
of 25 degrees. 

When it touched the bottom it was at an angle of 13 
degrees. The current submerged the electric generator, 
put out the light, and the electric wires were burned. 
In a few minutes bad gas was generated, making it 
difficult for us to breathe. 

It was at 10 A. M. on the 15 th inst. that the boat sank. 
Surrounded by poisonous gas, the crew strove to pump 
out the water. As soon as the boat sank the water in 
the main tank was being pumped out. The electric light 
was extinguished and the gauge was invisible, but it 
seems the water in the main tank was completely 
pumped out. 

The electric current has become useless, gas cannot 
be generated, and the hand pump is our only hope. The 
vessel is in darkness, and I note this down by the light 
through the conning tower at 11:45 a. m. 

The crew are now wet and it is extremely cold. It 
is my opinion that men embarking in submarines must 
possess the qualities of coolness and nerve, and must be 
extremely painstaking; they must be brave and daring 
in their handling of the boat. People may laugh at this 
opinion in view of my failure, but the statement is true. 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 253 

We have worked hard to pump out the water, but the 
boat is still in the same position. It is now twelve 
o'clock. The depth of water here is about ten fathoms. 

The crew of a submarine should be selected from the 
bravest, the coolest, or they will be of little use in time 
of crisis—in such as we are now. My brave men are 
doing their best. 

I always expect death when away from home. My 
will is therefore prepared and is in the locker. But this 
is of my private affairs. I hope Mr. Taguchi will send 
it to my father. 

A word to His Majesty the Emperor. It is my 
earnest hope that Your Majesty will supply the means 
of living to the poor families of the crew. This is my 
only desire, and I am so anxious to have it fulfilled. 

My respect and best regard to the following: 
Admiral Saito, Minister of the Navy; Vice Admirals 
Shinamura and Fujii, Rear Admirals Nawa, Yamashita 
and Narita—the air pressure is so light that I feel as if 
my eardrums will be broken—Captains Oguri and Ide, 
Commander Matsumura, Lieut-Commander Matsum- 
ura (this is my elder brother), Captain Funakoshi, Mr. 
Narita, and Mr. Ikuta—it is now 12:30 P. M. My 
breathing is so difficult and painful. 

I thought I could blow out gasoline, but I am intox¬ 
icated with it—Capt. Nakano—it is now 12:40 p. m. 

Here the record ended. The crew had been 
suffocated by carbonic-acid gas. 

Introducing the submarine into the Japanese 
navy led to agreeable contacts with various 
personages of high station, notably the vener¬ 
able Prince Ito, who had watched his country 


254 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

become Westernized from the time of Captain 
Perry’s visit, and Admiral Togo, in command 
of the Japanese fleet, who told me many 
stories of the war on the high seas. There 
was no doubt of our success, which was due 
in large part to Japanese promptitude in get¬ 
ting things done and to native eagerness to 
learn the ropes. Admiral Saito, Minister of 
Marine, honored us with a Japanese banquet 
at the Maple Club, Tokio, where we met about 
a hundred guests, most of them naval officers 
of rank. These officers appeared in regulation 
uniform; the host himself was distinctive in 
native garb. The room was entirely bare of 
furniture. Before entering, a formality to be 
respected was the removal of our shoes, a re¬ 
quirement of etiquette that meant spending 
the whole evening in stockinged feet. This 
was a new departure for us; going about shoe¬ 
less, to our Western eyes, marred the effect of 
correct evening clothes. 

Each guest sat on the floor, which was laid 
with matting. I was not accustomed to this 
form of rest, and an upholstered box was pro¬ 
vided for my comfort, but as guest of honor I 
insisted on conforming to Japanese custom and 
took my place with the others on the floor. A 
beautiful geisha girl was assigned to each 
guest to wait upon him and sat directly in front 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 255 

of her charge, so that the number of these 
handmaidens equaled that of the company. 

The banquet equipment consisted of a jug 
of saki (the national drink), a bowl of water, 
a saki cup, and chopsticks. The first course 
was raw fish, taken out of the water less than 
fifteen minutes before being served. Consum¬ 
ing raw fish with chopsticks was difficult, but 
the portion we could partake with such awk¬ 
ward implements more than satisfied our taste. 

During such repasts it was the custom for 
the host to sit in front of each guest, drink to 
him from the saki cup and wash out the cup in 
the water bowl, following which the guest 
drank from the same cup. Before the function 
ended each guest returned the compliment by 
sitting in front of the host and going through 
the same rite. With a hundred guests ex¬ 
changing drinks with the host, the imbibing 
was apt to become more or less strenuous if 
these amenities were faithfully observed. The 
banquet lasted until the small hours of the 
morning. 

Our work in Japan was finished by the mid¬ 
dle of September, when we left Yokohama on 
the Korea, homeward bound, in company with 
a congressional party who for several months 
had been investigating conditions in the Far 
East. 


CHAPTER XX 


Accessions to United States submarine fleet.—The 
Octopus. —Testing her hull strength two hundred feet 
down.—Contest with the Lake at Newport to obtain 
$3,000,000 contract for further boats.—Social effect of 
submarine’s presence at fashionable resort.—Features 
of the Lake. —Tests provide a continuous gala for 
Newport crowds. 

Our own government meantime saw the 
need of increasing the navy’s submarine fleet. 
Contracts for four more Holland boats had 
been awarded and were being built at the yard 
of the Fore River Shipbuilding Company at 
Quincy, Massachusetts, where I found our 
plant and force had been transferred. Three 
of the boats were of the R class, an outgrowth 
of the Adder group, and became a lively little 
trio known in the navy as the Viper, Cuttlefish, 
and Tarantula . They were of 170 tons dis¬ 
placement when submerged and had a surface 
speed of nine knots, and eight knots under 
water. The fourth craft was the Octopus , of 
the C class, whose features marked a notable 
development in our work, and upon whose 
performances depended the obtaining of fur¬ 
ther contracts under an appropriation for 
$3,000,000 voted by Congress. 

Submarines were becoming larger, faster, 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 257 

and more efficient than their predecessors, and 
the tests they faced were accordingly more 
searching. The Octopus was an advance on 
the Viper class. She was 105 feet long, had a 
fourteen-foot beam, and drew twelve feet of 
water in a light condition. She was of 270 
tons displacement, had 500 h. p. on the surface, 
and was equipped with twin screws driven by 
gasoline engines. She had a capable electric 
storage-battery system for use in submerged 
work. Under water she was driven by two 
50 h. p. electric motors, with which she made 
a speed of ten knots. When operated by her 
gasoline engines she ran at eleven nautical 
miles an hour on the surface. Her twin screws 
were a development from the single screw of 
her forerunners. A system of submarine bell 
signals enabled her to hold communication 
with the surface. Her war equipment was 
four 18-inch torpedo tubes. In her design she 
embodied the lessons we had learned in the 
operation of submarines both in our own and 
in foreign navies. 

The launching of the boat in October, 1906, 
signalized an extensive program of experi¬ 
mental work. The first boat of a new type 
always required a long and painstaking feeling 
out of manifold details, sometimes causing in- 


258 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

finite changes before her showing satisfied us. 
The boat had to distinguish herself, and we 
operated her on the surface and submerged 
almost daily for three months, to determine 
her points until the river froze over and the 
thick ice halted further work. 

The structural strength of her scantling 
and plating made her a much stiffer and 
stouter boat than any of her predecessors. We 
had been mindful of serious accidents which 
had befallen submarines in foreign navies. 
Where the boats sank to great depths the hull 
structure showed signs of failing under the 
enormous pressure. The hulls became dis¬ 
torted and leaks developed, both at the seams 
and at the outlets of pipes and other openings. 
We built the Octopus to enable her hull to 
withstand such ordeals in deep water. 

Her framework attracted attention in an 
exhibition run we made for a party of ladies 
who had never been in a submarine. After 
the boat was sealed up for submerging one of 
them asked how thick the hull plating was di¬ 
rectly above her head. We told her about half 
an inch. She doubted if this thickness was 
enough to insure safety and we therefore 
recommended that she occupy another part of 
the boat where the plating was stouter. She 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 259 

changed her position accordingly and ex¬ 
pressed relief. 

The Navy Department wanted to be assured 
of the boat's capacity to endure water pressure 
at a great depth. To meet this requirement 
they called on us to submerge the Octopus 200 
feet and keep her there for fifteen minutes. 
Such a test for a submarine had not been made 
before. It was necessary either to send down 
a crew in her or lower the boat by apparatus 
from the surface. Our own belief was that 
the hull could withstand a pressure much 
greater than 200 feet. At this stage of sub¬ 
marine development, however, I did not pro¬ 
pose to jeopardize the lives of the crew by 
risking an accident at a depth to which we had 
not hitherto ventured. Our decision to lower 
the boat by a heavy derrick, however, was not 
welcomed by our crew, each of whom had vol¬ 
unteered to go down without having any com¬ 
munication with the surface. 

We ballasted and sealed up the boat and 
lowered her some six miles east of the Boston 
Lightship by the help of the largest floating 
derrick we could find in Boston harbor. She 
slowly sank with about two thousand pounds 
of negative buoyancy. At a depth of fifty feet 
we stopped lowering and raised her for ex- 


260 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

amination. Then down she went again to 100 
feet. Some of us were anxious about her dis¬ 
appearance to this depth; we had no means of 
knowing just how she was enduring the ordeal. 
However, we had taken the risk of burying 
her in deep water all by her lonesome and con¬ 
tinued lowering her to 140 feet. Then the 
operator on the winch found he had reached 
the end of the line, and we could go no farther. 
Our lowering gear* was too short. The boat 
was hauled back to the surface, unharmed by 
the pressure, and returned to our base. 

Several weeks elapsed before this test was 
fully carried out. Well off the Boston Light 
we again swung her upon chains from a der¬ 
rick, with her ballast tanks filled, and dropped 
her to the extreme depth of water hereabout, 
which was 205 feet, keeping her down on the 
sea bed for the ten minutes required. On 
hauling her to the surface her structure was 
found intact and undamaged, and there was 
no evidence of leaks. The total pressure at the 
depth she reached, over the whole surface of 
the boat, must have amounted to about 15,000 
tons. 

The middle of April, 1907, found the Octo¬ 
pus at Newport to undergo competitive tests 
with the Lake, built by the Lake Company at 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 261 

Bridgeport, Connecticut, the navy being now 
prepared to award further contracts, under 
the large congressional appropriation avail¬ 
able, to the builder who could produce the best 
type of submarine of American invention. 
The chances of the Holland boats adding to 
their laurels depended upon how the Octopus 
acquitted herself. She was a government 
boat, and, having no craft of our own for the 
test, we obtained the consent of the navy 
authorities to our using her. We had trained 
the crew to the pink of condition. Proficient 
to the last degree, they formed as finished a 
group of professional submarine experts as 
undersea navigation had produced up to that 
time. 

Convoyed by the steam yacht Starling, the 
Octopus left Fore River late in the afternoon 
on April 19th for Narragansett Bay, where 
our trials were to take place. We tied up in 
Provincetown until the following morning, 
venturing to leave there at daylight for the 
run around the cape and over Nantucket shoals 
with a gale blowing and a high sea, but before 
rounding the cape we decided that a good har¬ 
bor was more desirable in that kind of weather 
than the open sea in a submarine. We there¬ 
upon turned back into Provincetown, a quiet 


262 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

little place where there was little for an active 
crew to do except touching up and regrooming 
the Octopus for her coming tests. A Sunday 
intervened, and in company with the president 
of the company which was building the Hol¬ 
land boats, we attended church in conformity 
with our custom on any Sabbath that preceded 
our undergoing important trials with their at¬ 
tendant dangers. The presence of every mem¬ 
ber of my crew at divine service was highly 
stimulating, and strengthened my belief that 
the coming trials would be crowned with suc¬ 
cess. 

The following morning, the wind and sea 
having subsided, we left Provincetown at 
daylight and made a splendid run around the 
cape and over the shoals, tying up for the 
night in Vineyard Haven. The next day we 
were in Newport, our base for the trials, and 
there we waited several days for the appear¬ 
ance of the naval Board of Inspection and 
Survey who were to conduct the tests. The 
Lake had arrived on the scene several weeks 
before, and had been undergoing government 
trials. 

The town’s interest in the pending contest 
between the two boats had reached a diverting 
stage. A New York newspaper published the 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 263 

following lively account of the social effects 
produced by the submarines on the fashionable 
resort: 

All Newport walks and talks sailor fashion. “Are 
you in diving trim?” is the greeting of wife to husband 
in millionaire’s row just before the morning bath. The 
festive cocktail nightcap is swallowed to the nautical 
toast, “Here is the way to submerge.” Strange to say, 
the exclusive set have enthusiastically fallen into the 
craze first adopted by the Newport shopgirls. He or 
she who can invent a new application of marine lan¬ 
guage to fit the situation is the lion of the hour. 

Two well-known colonists passing in automobiles 
stopped to gossip a second in transit. 

“How is your periscope ?” said one of them. 

“Nothing but sea serpents and octopi in sight,” was 
the response. 

“If I should die this morning I hope the sea will 
break in and flood me.” 

“There isn’t enough water in Narragansett Bay to 
satisfy the submarine to-day.” 

Everybody in Newport knows the captains and 
crews of the two underwater boats and most of their 
history. Everybody has a favorite. Hotel clerks hold 
thousands of dollars of stake money wagered by resi¬ 
dents each night as to the outcome of the speed contest 
each day. 

Betting was general. Saloons and drawing¬ 
rooms alike gambled on the two boats. The 
crew of the Octopus was confident of success 
and offered to meet all comers to the extent of 
their financial resources. 


264 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

The Lake boat was a developed type of 
the Protector, which had earlier contested, but 
without result, with the Fulton for government 
submarine contracts. She had a displacement 
of 250 tons and was 85 feet long. Her features 
duplicated, but on an extended scale, those of 
the Protector, which were described in a pre¬ 
vious chapter in connection with the Fulton 
tests. Being a boat of the even-keel type, the 
Lake submerged without altering her hori¬ 
zontal trim by the operation of her hydro¬ 
planes, or horizontal steel wings fixed at the 
sides of the vessel, which were so tilted as to 
cause the water to impinge against them and 
drive the boat down to the desired depth. Like 
the Protector, she had a removable device for 
insuring greater safety to her crew when 
under water in the form of a drop lead keel, 
five tons in weight, which could be readily 
freed from the bottom of the boat in case of 
danger by pulling a lever, thus giving the craft 
sufficient buoyancy to return to the surface. 
The boat had endured a depth test similar to 
that which the Octopus underwent, to deter¬ 
mine the seaworthiness of her hull under great 
water pressure. She voluntarily sank to the 
bottom at a depth of 138 feet with her crew 
aboard, returning to the surface about five 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 265 

minutes after disappearing. While resting on 
the bottom she was subjected to a pressure of 
fifty-two pounds to the square inch at the axis 
of the boat, and withstood this heavy pressure 
without any strain on her stout and water-tight 
hull. 

The boats went through their tests alter¬ 
nately for ten days in the course of the month 
of May, 1907. One day the Lake would carry 
out a series of trials prescribed by the naval 
board; the next day the Octopus would be sub¬ 
jected to similar tests. The boats accordingly 
furnished a gratuitous submarine gala for the 
Newport crowd day by day. 

Our official speed was far beyond the Navy 
requirement. We were able to operate the 
Octopus submerged at her top speed with a 
variation of less than twelve inches from a 
given depth. This has been found next to im¬ 
possible even in our modern submarines, which 
are necessarily great improvements over the 
Octopus class. 


CHAPTER XXI 


The Octopus goes under water for twenty-four 
hours to meet Navy requirements.—Crew face ordeal 
with indifference.—All in the day’s work.—How a 
night and day was spent under Narragansett Bay.— 
Monotony of life below the waves, shut from the 
world, more felt than fear of drowning.—Jules Verne 
overcolored the attractiveness of undersea existence.— 
Naval board approves the Octopus as the best sub¬ 
marine so far built.—More boats for navy.—Gasoline 
engines displaced by the Diesel heavy-oil type. 


The supreme test required in the Newport 
trials was that we should remain totally sub¬ 
merged for twenty-four hours without com¬ 
munication with the shore. Holland himself 
had undergone this immersion in his first boat, 
remaining at the bottom of the Passaic River 
a night and a day. In later boats the longest 
submergence we had made was fifteen hours, 
which we achieved with the Fulton irj 1904. 
The ill-fated French boat Lutin had exceeded 
this length of time under water, remaining 
seventeen hours in the harbor of Bizerta, 
Tunis, but she did not survive the test and was 
found wrecked, with her crew dead, 137 feet 
below. 

The deep-water ordeal undertaken by the 
Octopus took place at Bradford, which is on 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 267 

Narragansett Bay, a few miles above New¬ 
port. 

There is little romance in a dip of twenty- 
four hours under old ocean. When it became 
known at the Fore River Yards that the 
United States government demanded, among 
other tests, that I should take my crew of thir¬ 
teen into the hold of the Octopus and remain 
that length of time beneath the waves, the 
order did not create any excitement. This, 
probably, was due in a large measure to our 
confidence in the boat. Most of us knew the 
soundness of her construction. We also re¬ 
posed the fullest confidence in the boat’s de¬ 
signer, Lieutenant Spear, whose achievements 
in submarine-boat building had brought him a 
world-wide reputation. 

When the hatch was fastened down we sank 
quietly to the bottom of Narragansett Bay at 
four o’clock on the afternoon of May 15th. I 
had with me the following petty officers and 
crew, precisely the same number as were on 
board the French submarine Lutin: H. Momm, 
mate; P. L. Glenn, diver; W. F. C. Nindeman, 
gunner; J. W. Hume, E. H. Payne, C. Bergh, 
C. Kuester, C. Morgan, C. B. Miner, C. Berg¬ 
strom, R. Phinney, C. Lippincott, H. Gamber, 
and Marcus West. 


268 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

Every member of this crew hailed from 
Quincy, with the exception of West, who was 
a Salem lad. The crew had been trained under 
my supervision, and acted as a unit. They 
were as brave and cool a set of men as ever 
gathered together under any flag. Momm, the 
mate, was a man of great experience and re¬ 
source. Nindeman had sailed all over the 
world. He was one of the few survivors of 
the ill-fated Jeannette expedition. 

The men were fully alive to what might 
happen to a vessel in the course of a twenty- 
four hours’ submergence beneath the waves. 
But they were quite cheerful about it. No¬ 
body indulged in gloomy forebodings. There 
was no looking up and taking a last glimpse of 
the sky, not any theatrical attitudinizing of the 
kind. 

They faced their contemplated twenty-four 
hours’ imprisonment as they would any other 
task. It was undertaken with the knowledge 
that the eyes of the world—at least the eyes of 
the great navies of the world—were upon them. 

When the hatch was closed and the neces¬ 
sary preparations were completed I glanced at 
the crew, and experienced a thrill of pride as 
my eye rested on the well-knit and hardy forms 
and the fearless, resolute faces of my com¬ 
panions. 



STERN OF SUBMARINE SHOWING DIVING RUDDER UNDER SURFACE 








































OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 269 

“Boys,” I said, “we are now going to be 
locked up together for quite a spell, and we 
must try to make it as little tedious as possible. 
Let's give three cheers for the boat and her 
builders.” 

One of the tests we had to make was to run 
the motors for four hours after starting up. 
This was done by putting her nose against the 
dock so that, although running the motors, we 
really did not alter our position materially. 
Two tenders, the Hist and the Starling, were 
in attendance for fear some vessel, ignorant 
of our presence beneath them, might, after we 
had sunk to the bottom, drop a heavy anchor 
on us and thus crush in the shell of our little 
craft. 

We had dinner at six o’clock. The boat had 
been entirely cut off from the outside air and 
we were wholly dependent upon our com¬ 
pressed, or “canned,” supply. The great 
motors gave out a strange, humming sound. 
The crew conversed at first in low, constrained 
tones, but became more lively as the meal 
progressed. Everybody sat down to dinner 
except two men on watch. The meal was pre¬ 
pared by Marcus West, who acted as chef 
during the test. He used an electric stove, and 
care was taken to cook nothing which would 


270 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

give out noxious fumes. Our menu was as 
follows: 

Consomme 
Roast chicken 
Cold roast beef 
Cold ham 

Chicken salad Lobster salad 
Vegetables 
Boiled potatoes 
French green peas 
String beans 
Dessert 

Pie Cake Crullers 
Tea Coffee 

There were no cigars; no lights, except the 
electric bulbs, being allowed in the boat. This 
abstention from tobacco was the only hardship 
undergone by the crew during their stay on 
board the vessel. 

By seven o’clock the meal was over, the 
dishes were cleared away, the cloth was re¬ 
moved, and the men had disposed themselves 
about the boat, lounging, chatting, reading, 
and a game of freeze-out was started at the 
table. 

At eight o’clock, after running the motors 
for four hours, as I have described, the men 
were ordered to stations, the boat trimmed by 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 271 

admitting water to the ballast tanks, and we 
commenced to descend. There was a slightly 
perceptible jar; the Octopus quivered just a 
little from stem to stern; then she heeled over 
a trifle to port, righted, and rested lightly on 
an almost even keel, in the mud and ooze at 
the bottom of Narragansett Bay. The men 
returned to their game and, now that the great 
wheels of the motors had ceased to revolve, 
except for the low buzz of voices or an occa¬ 
sional ripple of laughter from the card- 
players, profound silence prevailed. 

The first thing I did after submerging was 
to set a watch of two men, which was changed 
every two hours. The duties of these men 
were to look after the interior of the boat, so 
that if any leak occurred they could remedy it. 

The Octopus had a bell immersed in a tank 
of water, which could be struck by means of 
air pressure. On the Starling, her steam- 
yacht tender, was another bell. This equip¬ 
ment, by means of which we communicated 
with each other, consisted of a set of telephone 
receivers in addition to the bells. The same 
device is in use on lightships and many sea¬ 
going craft. We signaled every hour to the 
Starling that all was well. We had a special 
code of our own by which we exchanged these 
safety signals. 


272 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

I am of rather an unimaginative turn of 
mind, but even for me it was not difficult to 
fancy that the terrible marine engine of de¬ 
struction in which we were confined was there 
for other than peaceful purposes; that our 
consorts were foreign warships searching for 
us; and that presently it would be my duty, as 
commander of the craft, to send crashing 
through the side of the gunboat which lay 
almost directly above us a torpedo which would 
shatter her to fragments. 

About nine o’clock I was up in the conning 
tower when I heard an exclamation beneath 
me, and, looking down, saw “Skipper” Glenn. 
His face wore a broad smile. 

“What is it?” I asked, getting back to earth 
again. 

“Lippincott has just cleaned up a big jack 
pot.” 

I climbed down the ladder and walked over 
to the table. The men were absorbed in the 
game. They might have been in the forecastle 
of a man-of-war or the smoking room of an 
Atlantic liner, for all the difference the situa¬ 
tion made with them. So much for custom. 

At ten o’clock I ordered all hands, except 
the two on watch, to turn in. The rubber 
mattresses were blown up with compressed 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 273 


air, all lights but one solitary shaded electric 
bulb were “doused,” and soon my crew were 
sleeping as peacefully and soundly as they 
would have done in their quarters at the Fore 
River Yards. I also stretched myself upon 
my mattress, but the sleep which came so 
readily to the others did not at first answer to 
my call. For the next two hours, and in fact 
until long after midnight, several thoughts 
crowded upon me to which my mind had 
hitherto been a stranger. 

As I half dozed on my rubber mattress 
there suddenly appeared to me in great black 
letters a headline I had read in the Boston 
Globe months before, “Submarine in Fatal 
Plunge Drowns Fourteen.” Instantly all the 
terrible details of the sinking of the Lutin 
flashed across my mind. I seemed to see the 
ill-fated craft 137 feet below the surface in the 
harbor of Bizerta, Tunis, the overturned ac¬ 
cumulators, the stifling fumes, the struggle 
for breath in the suddenly darkened hull. 

I roused myself from this gloomy reverie, 
knowing well the careful construction of our 
craft and that I had with me an expert crew. 
No fear of a like disaster to the Octopus fur¬ 
ther disturbed my dreams. 

Every hour during the night we exchanged 


274 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

code signals with the Starling. The stereo¬ 
typed phrase, “-bells, and all's well,” be¬ 

came monotonous. The muffled clang of the 
signal gong was the only sound which broke 
the stillness of the night watches. 

At about 6 a. m. I got up and, waking the 
mate, we made together a thorough inspection 
of the hull. Notwithstanding that we went 
over every inch of the interior surface we 
could discover no signs of leakage. There 
was not even any moisture on the inner shell 
of steel. 

At about seven o'clock I ordered the hands 
turned out. The freshness of the air was very 
noticeable. Up to this time we had had no 
occasion to draw upon our compressed supply. 
Some surprise was expressed that the air was 
not more vitiated. The exposure of litmus 
showed but slight discoloration from the pres¬ 
ence of carbonic acid. 

The air flasks had a pressure of 2,000 
pounds to the square inch. These flasks were 
tested to double the working air pressure 
placed upon them. 

Of course it didn't seem exactly like getting 
up in the morning.. There was nothing but 
the ship's chronometer to assure us that it was 
7 A. M. After a look through the periscope 
I piped all hands to breakfast. 



OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 275 

The following menu cheered them: 

Fruit 

Oranges Bananas 
Oatmeal 
Bacon and eggs 
Saratoga chips 
Rolls and coffee 

At eight o'clock we struck the usual signal 
to the Starling, and, in addition to the stereo¬ 
typed answer, received a brief resume of the 
morning's news. I have forgotten what it was 
exactly; but there was something about a Peace 
Conference, which sounded funny enough 
when read out to the crew of the Octopus, 
probably the deadliest weapon of war then 
invented. To while away the time I started 
and encouraged a discussion upon disarma¬ 
ment. That the crew of the Octopus were born 
fighters may be inferred. No peace party could 
be discovered among them. 

About nine o'clock one of the boys came up 
and informed me that “C. Bergh had an or¬ 
gan." I did not at first exactly comprehend 
how an instrument of that magnitude had been 
smuggled into the interior of the Octopus 
through her narrow hatchway; but I was ulti¬ 
mately given to understand that Mr. Bergh's 


276 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

instrument was a mouth organ. The sailor 
modesty of Mr. Bergh would not permit his 
essaying anything more classic than “Waiting 
at the Church” and “Home, Sweet Home,” but 
he was loudly applauded. I doubt if Caruso 
ever had a more appreciative audience. Good 
music or bad, it broke the tedious spell which 
seemed to settle on the crew after breakfast 
was over. 

This brings me to the reflection that, even in 
time of war, the monotony of life below the 
waves, shut out from the world, excluded from 
a view of the fleeting clouds and from the 
sound of the waters, except as some faint mur¬ 
mur reaches the ear through the double steel 
shell of the submerged craft, must always con¬ 
stitute one of the chief obstacles to prolonged 
existence in a submarine. The feeling of be¬ 
ing cut off from the world, not the fear of 
suddenly intruding waters and death by drown¬ 
ing, was uppermost in the minds of the im¬ 
prisoned. The mere fact that one could not 
breathe the air of heaven created a mad¬ 
dening longing to be once more on the surface. 
The knowledge that you were confined within 
the steel walls of your submarine prison made 
you long for freedom. 

Jules Verne drew an enticing picture of life 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 277 

below seas in his splendid romance of the Nau¬ 
tilus, but I am unable, from my own experi¬ 
ence, to say much for its attractiveness. Per¬ 
haps some embittered recluse like Captain 
Nemo might find it enjoyable; but we must 
remember that the Frenchman's submarine 
was a very different affair from the fighting 
machine in which we were imprisoned. The 
involuntary prisoners of the Nautilus were 
conducted to a splendid dining apartment 
glittering with china, porcelain, and glass, and 
were fed with strange, delicious dishes pre¬ 
pared from the flora and fauna of the sea. 
They had access to a library of 12,000 vol¬ 
umes, and an immense drawing-room contain¬ 
ing a grand piano and with walls hung with 
paintings and tapestries of rare value. The 
glass windows of the Nautilus also opened up 
the many wonders of the deep, which sight 
was denied us in the hold of the Octopus . 
Nor were we provided with Captain Nemo's 
armor-like suits which enabled him to leave 
his craft and explore the wonders at the bot¬ 
tom of the ocean. 

In one respect, however, we felt that we 
were as well off as Captain Nemo and his 
crew. Jules Verne tells us that in the Nau¬ 
tilus men's hearts never failed them. And so 


278 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

it was with those bottled up in the Octopus, 
knowing well the skill and care that had been 
put into her construction. 

When the time of our imprisonment had ex¬ 
pired the Octopus responded instantly to the 
action of her powerful pumps, and as the 
water ballast was forced from her tanks she 
gradually, and on an even keel, rose up 
through the water, freeing herself without a 
shock from the ooze in which she had been 
embedded, and riding securely upon the sur¬ 
face. 

When the hatch was opened and the mem¬ 
bers of the trial board descended into the hold, 
they found the atmosphere unimpaired. So 
little of our compressed-air supply had been 
used—only one-forty-fifth—that at the rate of 
consumption, providing we had been suffici¬ 
ently stocked with water and provisions, we 
could have remained for forty-five days be¬ 
neath the waves. 

The naval board decided that the Octopus 
was the best type of submarine boat so far 
built. The outcome was that seven more Hol¬ 
land boats were built for the navy, four of 
them duplicating the Octopus . The remaining 
three registered a further growth from that 
type. 





MORNING BATH ON SUBMARINE 

































































































OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 279 

The group represented the last Holland 
boats using gasoline engines. The govern¬ 
ment thereafter required the installation of 
oil engines of the Diesel type, to eliminate the 
danger arising from the use of gasoline. 
Later boats built were installed with such en¬ 
gines of English design, this being the only 
Diesel type then available. Still later marine 
engines of the heavy-oil Diesel type were built 
in this country and installed in submarines. 
Development of the Diesel had been well ad¬ 
vanced in Nuremberg, Germany, before 
American engineers turned their attention to 
the type. After examining all known engines 
so classified, they decided that the Nuremberg 
product was the best so far developed for sub¬ 
marines, and rights for construction in the 
United States were acquired. The first Diesel 
engines built in America had various defects, 
the chief of which w T as their complicated oper¬ 
ation. The outcome was a newer type which 
endured hard service and worked with a high 
efficiency in many of our modern submarines. 
The change from gasoline to heavy oil revealed 
that with a given quantity of the heavier fuel 
the number of horse-power hours obtainable 
was twice that from a like quantity of gasoline. 
Thus a boat having a given fuel-tank capacity 


280 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

could double her radius of action with the 
change from gasoline to heavy oil. 

Between 1908 and 1914 the Electric Boat 
Company, the builder of the Holland type, 
added sixteen submarines to the United States 
navy. By the latter year, when the World 
War came, the government had about thirty 
boats, including the earlier type of the Adder 
class, which by then, had become more or less 
obsolescent. 


CHAPTER XXII 


The third American submarine flotilla, typified by 
the Salmon .—Achievements of 1910.—Germany’s de¬ 
velopments from the Holland type. — Submarine 
strength in the World War.—Growth of Holland boats 
from the 1895 boat to the Schley. —Inventor’s with¬ 
drawal from the industry he created.—Denounced sub¬ 
marines developed by his successors as unseaworthy 
death traps.—Expansion of his invention beyond his 
scope and control.—Declining years occupied in de¬ 
vising a flying machine.—His death just before the 
World War’s outbreak.—German submarines evolved 
from the Holland type realize his early aims in seek¬ 
ing to weaken British naval power. 


The performances of the seven Holland 
boats built after the Octopus test dispelled any 
remaining doubt as to the practical value of the 
submarine. Doubt naturally lingered in view 
of the long apprenticeship such craft required 
even before emerging from the final experi¬ 
mental stages. 

This group of boats, three of which were of 
enlarged displacement (337 tons submerged), 
formed the third American submarine flotilla. 
They achieved noteworthy records in the naval 
maneuvers of 1910. A preliminary run of 
the entire flotilla from Newport to Gloucester 
(150 sea miles) was made submerged except 
when passing the Nantucket shoals, where the 
slight depth of water required the vessels to 


282 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

run awash. Beyond making needful ascen¬ 
sions to the surface at night to recharge the 
storage batteries, the runs were uninterrupted 
and without mishaps, and lasted twelve hours 
at a stretch. Officers and crew showed no ill 
effects from being under water two days and 
nights. A score or more of surface ships the 
boats passed en route had no suspicion of their 
proximity. Such a voyage at the time would 
have been notable enough if achieved by a 
single vessel. Accomplished by seven boats, it 
registered a more important feat—uniform 
efficiency and organization in the control of 
a flotilla. One of the boats, the Salmon, the 
same year made a voyage from Boston to Ber¬ 
muda and back, covering about 1,500 knots 
under its own power without external assist¬ 
ance. This trip finally proved the habitability 
and safety of American submarines at sea in 
any weather. In these post-war days such 
feats are of no account, but it is needful to 
recall that in the pre-war period the submarine 
was rightfully regarded as the wonder of the 
deep. 

The developed Hollands made equal strides 
in foreign waters. Reviewing the submarine 
situation in 1911, Engineering , a leading Brit¬ 
ish technical organ, commented: 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 283 

While it is probably too much to expect that every 
possible virtue in an under-water boat will ever be 
combined in any one design, or that, having been com¬ 
bined, there will be unanimity of expert opinion as to 
that fact, nevertheless the conclusion seems to be war¬ 
ranted that the British Admiralty made no mistake 
when it selected the Holland type as the basis for the 
development of British flotillas. Their judgment as 
to the soundness of the principles involved in the de¬ 
signs ... has certainly been confirmed in a gratifying 
way by the wide acceptance of the same general type, 
not only in the United States, but in Europe, Asia, and 
Africa. 

Germany, like Great Britain, adopted the 
Holland type, only to depart from it. She 
tarried long before getting into line with other 
nations, but when she moved in submarine con¬ 
struction, she moved fast. Her naval experts 
favored the Holland principle as the most effi¬ 
cient for undersea service, indorsing the opin¬ 
ion of Krupp’s, who evolved and developed 
the Germania class of boats, which became the 
standard type of the German navy. 

Germany’s chief contribution to submarine 
science, in fact, considering the unsurpassed 
success she made of her U-boats, lay in her 
adoption of the Holland type. It is doubtful 
if her U-boat record would have been so out¬ 
standing had she made a different choice. 
Though the greatest user of submarines, Ger- 


284 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 
many, ihowever, had no hand whatever in 
their early development. Her achievements 
were confined to their operation. Certainly 
her technicians made notable contributions to 
submarine equipment in the production of the 
oil motors I have previously referred to. Using 
them in her own boats, she developed a class 
of submarines which were unmatched in their 
aggregate record by those of any other 
nation. But beyond building a good engine 
she added no feature of great novelty to under 
water navigation. Her submarine plumes were 
borrowed, mainly from the United States, 
where the efficiency of modern undersea craft 
had its real genesis. 

At the outset of the World War, America’s 
little under-water fleet of thirty, in contrast 
with the expanding tonnage of the European 
nations, stood out as a glaring example of un¬ 
preparedness, of letting foreign powers stride 
ahead in producing undersea craft. Many of 
the foreign boats came from American plants, 
which hummed with submarine orders from 
abroad. Germany began turning out boats 
in her own and in Belgian yards at the rate of 
two every three weeks and then one a week, 
with varying displacements of 200, 800 and 
1,200 tons. When the United States entered 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 285 

the conflict in 1917, the Central Powers had an 
impressive submarine navy. The Allies were 
not far behind. Yet by that year the United 
States had added only four to its submarine 
fleet. Its entry into the war naturally en¬ 
forced a considerable addition. 

What the submarine became in the war pe¬ 
riod formed a startling enough contrast to its 
humble forerunner—the Holland boat of 1895. 
Twenty years, relatively speaking, had devel¬ 
oped a midget into a giant. The Holland type 
of 1895 was a little craft 53 feet long, dis¬ 
placed 73 tons submerged, ran 5 knots an hour 
under water and 7 on the surface, and had a 
cruising radius of 200 miles. By the decade 
following the length had increased to 82 feet, 
the speed to 8 knots submerged and 8$4 on 
the surface, the displacement nearly two and a 
half times and the cruising radius to 850 miles. 
By 1910 the length was 147 feet, the sub¬ 
merged displacement 434 tons, the submerged 
speed 10^ knots, the surface speed 14 knots, 
the cruising radius 2,300 miles. 

In 1913 came the 913-ton boat. Up to that 
year the submarine really belonged to coast 
defense, though the Salmon, as mentioned, 
had shown her capacity for oversea service. 
Existing boats at this period were best suited 


286 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

for harbor and coastwise scoutwork, their oper¬ 
ation mainly confined either to the harbor 
itself or close to its mouth. As such, the 
earlier submarines were really dirigible mines, 
replacing fixed mines, which proved more 
dangerous to friend than to foe. They duly 
came to pass from port to port under their own 
power, thus broadening their field of action. 
Their utility for coast protection, instead of 
the ancient port mines, was specially recog¬ 
nized by Great Britain, where all such outlying 
under-water defenses at her chief naval and 
commercial ports were abolished and the pro¬ 
tection of these harbors intrusted to submarine 
and torpedo boats. 

The big 1913 boats approximated to the 
larger German submarines which startled the 
world with their deadly efficiency in the early 
stages of the World War. With 1915 came 
the boat displacing 1,454 tons under water, 
capable of a submerged speed of from 10*4 to 
lV / 2 knots, a surface speed of from 14 to 20 
knots, and a radius of action extending be¬ 
tween 2,300 and 3,000 miles. The first of this 
class was the American Schley which reached 
a high mark in the progression the submarine 
had been making all along toward greater 
habitability, ease and certainty of control, 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 287 

safety, and range, trustworthiness and effect¬ 
iveness of torpedo armament, and, most of 
all, in staying power on the high seas in face 
of wind and weather and away from a sub¬ 
marine base. The boat’s chief features em¬ 
braced diving rudders both at the stern and at 
the bow, a hull divided longitudinally into 
seven water-tight compartments and four 
powerful torpedo tubes at the bow and two at 
the stern. 

The Holland submarine had far outgrown 
the conceptions of its inventor. Various modi¬ 
fications of the type, in fact, especially those 
produced in American and British yards, he 
repudiated as any offspring of his. As early 
as 1904 he severed his connection with the 
company which had acquired the patents cov¬ 
ering his invention, and the Holland boats 
henceforth were developed without his aid. 
Differences with the company led to litigation 
by both sides. The inventor charged that the 
company had failed to fulfill the terms of the 
contract under which the patents were as¬ 
signed. He complained of being forced into 
the background after the assignment of the 
patents, of his advice and experience being 
disregarded, and of the management and con¬ 
struction of new vessels being placed in the 


288 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 
hands of engineers unfamiliar with submarine 
construction. He passed many strictures on 
the course the navy and the Holland-boat 
builders followed in improving the type, and 
had clashes with Admiral Capps, of the Naval 
Bureau of Construction, among others. 

“Uncle Sam’s officials turned on me because 
I criticized alleged improvements made on the 
Holland,” he protested in 1909. “I did not 
graduate from Annapolis. I am not disloyal 
or without patriotism, but I am ashamed of the 
boasted efficiency of our bureaus of construc¬ 
tion. Nations got a terrible sample of poor 
submarine construction when the A-8 went to 
the bottom in English waters. I then charged 
the English Admiralty with careless construc¬ 
tion, and our Admiral Capps charged me with 
indiscretion. When I review the supposed im¬ 
provements in submarine work by our youthful 
naval architects, graduates of Annapolis, I am 
severely arraigned by these selfsame young¬ 
sters. They presume to know more about sub¬ 
marines than I do. They favor nothing but 
what comes from England. Uncle Sam will 
have nothing to do with me, and I am sure I 
have as little respect for English naval con¬ 
structors as they have for me.” 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 289 

Nevertheless the Holland boats, as the 
record shows, grew apace in efficiency. They 
became the product of the teamwork of many 
minds, building upon the foundations the in¬ 
ventor laid in his early boats. Holland blazed 
the trail; others followed it. 

“He made many complaints to Congress," 
Burton J. Hendrick remarked in recounting 
Holland's work after his death in 1914, “de¬ 
nouncing the so-called Holland boats as unsea¬ 
worthy ‘death traps.' His last days were made 
unhappy because he had failed to influence 
Congress and the public; almost with his last 
breath he prophesied disaster to his country. 
To what extent these lamentations represented 
the disappointment of a neglected inventor and 
to what extent they had a real basis, only 
events can show." 

Events at least showed, as this story does, 
that Holland builded better than he knew, but 
that, like many another invention, his subma¬ 
rine, in other hands, expanded beyond the 
scope and control of its inceptor. 

He occupied his later years with devising a 
boat which adhered to principles from which 
the developed Holland boats had departed. “I 
conceived the first submarine. Why cannot I 
conceive something better?" he said at sixty- 


290 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

seven. The new boat was to travel across the 
Atlantic, follow a battleship fleet, make a 
speed of twenty-five knots an hour, and ride 
as safely on the high seas as an ocean grey¬ 
hound. Admiral Capps rejected the device, 
and nothing came of it. Nor did any success 
attend his design for a flying machine, to 
which he devoted his restless mind about the 
time the Wright brothers were testing their 
first airplanes. There is no record that he 
ever ventured on a flight in the device. 

Rheumatism gripped him periodically and 
curtailed his activities. Unknown to his 
neighbors as a man of any note, he lived in 
East Orange, New Jersey, his small frame 
stooping, his gait awkward, his manner nerv¬ 
ous, due to his near-sightedness, which in¬ 
creased with the years, yet keen-brained, 
studious, and ambitious to the last, spending 
much of his time at the rear of his home, where 
he had a workshop sealed with various locks. 
He did not marry until nearly fifty, and in his 
declining years was surrounded by a growing 
family of five—the eldest of whom is John P. 
Holland, Jr. 

Holland died two weeks after the outbreak 
of the World War in 1914. The newspapers 
dismissed his death in brief paragraphs. Ger- 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 291 

many’s invasion of Belgium and Great 
Britain’s war preparations were events of 
greater moment. Equally eventful as news of 
infinitely more weight than the passing of a 
forgotten inventor was the sinking by a Ger¬ 
man submarine of the British warships 
Aboukir, Cressy, and Hogue in the North Sea 
six weeks after his death. The intimate con¬ 
nection with Holland of that sea tragedy, 
which stood out among the first of many to 
follow, was not noted. A submarine developed 
from the Holland type had finally achieved 
what he had vainly set out to do with the 
Fenian Ram —it had dealt a telling blow at the 
British navy. 

Holland has no monument, and perhaps he 
needs none. His genius projects sufficiently as 
a powerful though unrecognized factor in the 
momentous maritime events of the World 
War. 


CHAPTER XXIII 


Future expansion in size, power, and gunnery.—The 
pace Germany set.—The Diesel electric drive.—Great 
Britain’s and Japan’s big submersibles.—The American 
V class.—Progress halted by lack of money.—The 
Flamm 7,000-ton submarine.—The submersible battle¬ 
ship.—United States naval foresight produces plan for 
one of 20,000 tons.—Italy also looking ahead with 
similar plans. 

As already seen, the war’s close left the 
status of submarines at a crucial stage. It was 
alike denounced and valued. Recognition of 
its worth finally overcame the odium cast upon 
it. Its outlook now promises a future expan¬ 
sion in structure, power, speed, and equipment 
far beyond the scope of any type yet built or 
building. There are foretokens of a growth 
which may lead eventually to a realignment of 
naval values by the ranking of surface fighting 
vessels as secondary to big undersea craft yet 
to come. In short, the future has in store the 
submersible battleship. 

Germany set the pace. Her ripe experience 
in construction and operation produced her 
cruising submarines, a small fleet of eight 
boats, built in 1918. They were of 2,700 ton¬ 
nage, had a surface speed of 18 knots, and a 
radius of 20,000 miles. Their armament in- 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 293 

eluded six-inch guns; the crews numbered 
more than 100. In equipment, Germany, by 
the war’s end, had also developed a number of 
high-speed Diesel engines of 3,000 shaft horse 
power. She only succeeded in using these 
engines in a couple of her cruising submarines 
just before the Armistice. 

Since then the naval countries, including the 
United States, have not stood still. Both in 
high-powered engines and in gunnery they are 
advancing at the pace Germany set. The 
British K type, with steam turbines, were ex¬ 
perimentally installed with Diesel engines of a 
higher power than Germany produced. Their 
success would result in an undersea fleet with 
a tremendous range, especially as Great 
Britain has 12-inch guns on some of her sub¬ 
marines, built for attacking land forts. Her 
K boats carry eight 18-inch torpedo tubes and 
a 4-inch and 3-inch gun. They have a sub¬ 
merged displacement of 2,650 tons, a speed of 
24 knots, and are 334 feet long. 

Japan is credited with having building plans 
for sixty new boats, and there is little doubt 
that she will eventually produce craft of large 
tonnage. 1 One of her big submersibles, ac- 

* Reports in the summer of 1922 that Japan was evading the Washing- 
ton naval treaty by augmenting her tonnage of auxiliary vessels brought 
an Admiralty statement from Tokio that her present plans embraced only 
twenty-four new submarines with an ajearregate tonnage cf 28,166. 


294 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

cording to Motorship, will have three two- 
cycle Diesel engines of 4,000 shaft horse 
power. This drive indicates, it is added, a 
boat displacing some 2,200 tons on the surface, 
350 feet long, and a speed of 23 to 25 knots, 
and that such a vessel could carry ten 18-inch 
torpedo tubes, a 6-inch gun and two 4-inch 
guns, as well as anti-aircraft armament. 
Japan's use of powerful electric-drive engines 
of the Diesel type conveys the scope and range 
of her future submarine fleet. 

What of the United States? The naval ap¬ 
propriation bill of 1922 provided for the com¬ 
pletion of forty-two submarines under con¬ 
struction, for which some $19,000,000 was 
available. The building program included 
three boats of the V class, a type larger and 
more powerful than any submarine the navy 
has had in service, but, nevertheless, of lower 
grade as fighting craft than many existing 
foreign boats. Their tonnage slightly exceeds 
2,000, and they have a length of 300 feet, a 
speed of 21 knots, and a maximum brake 
horse power of 7,000. They also are to be 
equipped with Diesel electric-drive engines. 
For armament they have one 5-inch gun, a 
machine gun, and six torpedo tubes. The V 
class are of a design adaptable to great ex- 



SUBMARINES IN WET DOCK, FORE RIVER, 1914 









































































































• a 







































































































OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 295 

pansion in power and size, and the navy hopes 
to profit by the experience gained from their 
operation in the construction of future boats. 
But neither the available funds nor present 
naval plans permit of this development. The 
three boats can be completed as designed under 
existing appropriations, and additional craft 
must await further funds from an indifferent 
Congress. 

The post-war period has produced—so far 
on paper—a 7,000-ton submersible, designed 
by Professor Oswald Flamm, constructor of 
the German commercial submarine Deutsch¬ 
land. Germany is barred from building any 
U-boats for decades to come, and the Flamm 
boat is, therefore, of no use to her. Its con¬ 
templated radius of action is put at 23,000 
miles, or approximately four round trips be¬ 
tween the United States and the North Sea 
without touching any port. Its projected 
armament is two 8-inch and four 3j/2-inch 
guns, with 5,000 rounds of ammunition, and 
eight torpedo tubes with forty torpedoes. The 
designer predicted, not without ground, that if 
Japan secured his design she could, in case of 
war with the United States, utilize several of 
such submersibles to cut off the Pacific from 
the Atlantic fleet by destroying the entrance to 


296 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

the Panama Canal. A Berlin report had it 
that Professor Flamm would rather sell his 
invention to the United States than to any 
other country, but that Japan and Great 
Britain had been pressing him to turn over the 
plans to them, while the United States had 
“shown only a mild interest” in the boat. 
There was a reason. 

The 7,000-ton submarine, in the present 
condition of naval exchequers, is a long way 
off practical realization. It approaches the 
restriction in the size of auxiliary craft 
(10,000 tons) named by the Naval Limitation 
Treaty, but only the five powers signatory to 
that covenant are governed by it. Other na¬ 
tions can develop their auxiliary craft as they 
choose without hindrance. Possibly the sub¬ 
mersible battleship, which the Flamm design 
foreshadows, may come from them, in view of 
the restraints in expansion the five leading 
powers have imposed on their navies. In any 
event, the development of submarines points 
clearly enough to the eventual emergence of 
great fighting ships which can disappear under 
water to escape surface attack when at a dis¬ 
advantage. The bombing airship, which has 
developed step by step with the submarine, has 
already opened a vista picturing huge war- 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 297 

craft seeking the protection of submergence. 
Certainly the airship and the submarine have 
alike impaired the fighting value of battleships 
on the surface. 

Our own Navy Department is not unmind¬ 
ful of the outlook. Its construction experts 
are credited with taking a long look into the 
hazy future by devising tentative plans for a 
20,000-ton submarine. This would mean a 
craft equal to the combined tonnage of the old 
battleships Massachusetts and Iowa, with a 
strong armament for both surface and sub¬ 
merged operations. It is thus a conception of 
a submersible battleship. The existence of 
such plans, as implying a practicable project, is 
not admitted, and the report is here recorded 
with due circumspection. 

The prospect of such a boat ever being built 
on plans as conceived to-day is remote. Such 
an innovation, in the Navy Department’s view, 
lies so far in the future and is so liable to 
change and development that nothing can yet 
be said about it. Still, it is of moment to the 
chronicler. That such plans should be formu¬ 
lated at all shows the direction which con¬ 
structive ideas in the field of submarine de¬ 
velopment are taking. They have a signifi¬ 
cance for that reason alone, especially as the 


298 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

actual prospects of expansion in cruising sub¬ 
marines point to such an eventual growth of 
the type. Even Italy, which cannot be deemed 
a dangerous foe in her present submarine 
power, is looking ahead in the same direction 
with plans for building four classes of large 
submarines, varying from 21,000 tons, 24,000 
h. p. and 16 knots speed, to 22,000 tons, 18,500 
h. p. and 20 knots. So the United States is 
not alone in its foresight. The decade covered 
by the Naval Limitation Treaty expires in 
1932. Much may happen meantime; much will 
surely happen in naval policy thereafter. 


CHAPTER XXIV 


The submarine situation wide open.—All countries 
free to build them.—The case for smaller nations.— 
Submarine strength of leading navies.—Conflict over 
allotting tonnage proportionate to capital ships.— 
France’s objection to being rated below the United 
States and Great Britain.—British action if France 
builds big submarine fleet.—A race for supremacy in¬ 
evitable.—Outlook for another conference curbing 
increase of under-water craft.—Probable reaction on 
American naval policy.—Scheme for adequately guard¬ 
ing our coasts by submarine fleets at temporary bases. 
—Fixed defenses ineffective without submersibles.— 
Need of hundreds of such boats.—Economy of subma¬ 
rine defense.—Popular indifference to naval needs. 


Final considerations turn to a further 
study of the maritime issues presented before 
the Conference for the Limitation of Naval 
Armament. That assemblage left the subma¬ 
rine situation wide open. It was an explosive 
subject. Drawn together to limit armaments, 
the delegates departed from their agenda by 
advancing weighty arguments showing the 
imperative need of extensive undersea fleets in 
view of the curtailment of capital ships. Sec¬ 
retary Hughes mildly protested against the 
course they were taking. He reminded them 
that it was not a conference to increase arma¬ 
ments. Nevertheless, the case for the aboli¬ 
tion of the submarine was adroitly utilized by 


300 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

M. Sarraut, speaking for France, to show that 
the conference could not control their limita¬ 
tion, and that the powers faced the necessity 
of continuing to build them. 

What of other nations, he asked, who were 
not represented at the conference? Were they, 
or at least those who possessed submarines, 
desirous of abolishing them ? Any decision of 
the Conference to end undersea craft would 
apply only to the five leading powers which 
made it. Would the other nations submit and 
follow their example? What would happen if 
these nonrepresented countries continued to 
build submarines, either for their own or for 
some other government’s use? What sort of 
a situation would face the powers who relin¬ 
quished submarines if, peradventure, war were 
to come again? They might be confronted 
with great submarine forces constructed out¬ 
side the five-power group. Countries not able 
to afford big fleets would naturally reserve to 
themselves the right to build undersea craft. 
They had no other choice when they beheld 
greater nations maintain powerful surface 
armadas. A decision to abolish submarines 
would therefore have to await the adherence 
of other nations—and they would not get it. 

The case against the abolition of submarines 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 301 

was insurmountable, as indicated in the first 
chapter. It introduced elements which forced 
the recognition that their retention was in¬ 
evitable. Restrictions on their use were read¬ 
ily enough forthcoming, this being the one 
submarine issue on which the Conference 
found no inherent difficulty in reaching 
unanimity. 

Thus was the ground laid for further,con¬ 
tention. Submarines had come to stay and 
could not be ousted; but they must not be 
wrongly used. What, then, should each nation 
have? 

The submarine tonnage, built and building, 
of the leading navies at the close of 1921, stood 
as under: 

United States. 95,000 tons 

Great Britain . 82,464 “ 

France . 31,391 “ 

Japan . 31,452 

Italy . 21,000 “ 

The first proposal to limit the building of 
submarines, based on a ratio to fighting sur¬ 
face fleets, was to allot 90,000 tons each to the 
United States and Great Britain, the ratio for 
France, Japan and Italy to be what submarine 
tonnage they already possessed. This meant 
that the United States reduced its tonnage by 







302 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 
5,000, Great Britain increased hers by about 
7,500 tons, and the other three countries could 
not add to their existing undersea fleets. 

France held out strenuously for the propor¬ 
tion the United States and Great Britain 
would receive, namely, 90,000 tons. Japan 
wanted 54,000 tons, but was not disposed to 
insist on any increase if France accepted the 
status quo. Italy sought to be on a parity with 
France, whatever irreducible minimum the lat¬ 
ter country could be prevailed on to accept. 

France was the stormy petrel of the Confer¬ 
ence on the submarine issue. Secretary 
Hughes pictured the situation should her de¬ 
mand for 90,000 tons be acceded to by the 
Conference. Submarines, if they were to be 
available for distinctly defensive purposes in 
connection with the movements of fighting 
fleets, should bear some definite proportion to 
such fleets. Used for laying mines, scouting, 
etc., their work should have a relation to the 
operations of the fleet as a whole. If France’s 
fleet of 175,000 tons required a submarine 
tonnage of 90,000 to scout for and protect it, 
how much more submarine power would the 
United States and Great Britain need to assist 
their respective fleets of 500,000? Secretary 
Hughes told the Conference that allowing 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 303 

France such a tonnage would, on the basis of a 
practicable ratio to her fighting ships, involve 
the necessity of the United States and Great 
Britain greatly augmenting their undersea 
fleets to make their ratio conform to France’s. 
Hence an allotment to France of 90,000 tons 
reversed the intent of the Conference; it meant 
a big increase, not a limitation or reduction. 

Further, increased submarine fleets predi¬ 
cated the provision in numbers of light craft 
and destroyers, the natural foes of submarines. 
In this direction Lord Balfour warned the 
Conference that if Great Britain had at her 
gates a fleet of submarines aggregating 90,000 
tons, 60,000 of which necessarily would be of 
the newest type, she would reserve fullest free¬ 
dom of action. No limitation in the building 
of auxiliary vessels for attacking submarines 
would be recognized by any British govern¬ 
ment. 

The next proposal was that the United 
States and Great Britain would be content with 
60,000 tons and that Japan be allotted 36,500, 
France 35,500< and Italy the same as France. 
But again France insisted on a parity with the 
two leading navies; if they received 60,000 
tons, so must she. She objected to being in 
either second or third place. Her spokesmen 


304 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

protested that her attitude was not due to fear 
of neighbors. She had long coast lines and a 
great colonial empire, second to Great Brit¬ 
ain’s, distributed all over the seas, and was 
concerned solely about its defense, policing and 
surveillance. Her colonial empire, though 
many were ignorant of it, really existed, and 
must be protected, especially in safeguarding 
communications with the mother country. 

The outcome was that the Conference could 
not agree to a limitation of submarine tonnage. 
A country could build what submarines it 
pleased until the time was ripe to call another 
conference to reconsider the subject. The sit¬ 
uation presented the prospect that if France, 
of her own volition, determined to get into line 
with the United States and Great Britain as a 
submarine power, her action would signalize a 
race in the building of great undersea fleets 
and opposing craft. 

The Conference wranglings emphasized 
what was clear enough all along. Every naval 
nation, barring Great Britain, wanted more 
submarines, by international agreement if pos¬ 
sible, and, otherwise, to the extent of their 
financial means. And Great Britain, accept¬ 
ing the situation after being balked in her plan 
to abolish such craft, would herself be in the 



BOAT DESIGNED AND BUILT BY JOHN P. HOLLAND IN 1877 AND 
EXPERIMENTED WITH IN THE PASSAIC RIVER 



SKETCH SHOWING PROGRESS MADE IN THE DESIGN AND CONSTRUC 
TION OF SUBMARINES FROM l 8 j 5 TO I919 























































































































































































































































































































. 
































* 










OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 305 

forefront in expanding her undersea fleet if 
France ventured to set the pace. Always far- 
seeing in her naval policy, Great Britain was 
bound to give thought to the possibility of an¬ 
other submarine blockade of her coasts, in 
view of the outlook for an unrestricted scram¬ 
ble for submarine supremacy. British observ¬ 
ers even foresaw her future need of an under¬ 
sea commercial fleet of boats of 3,000 to 6,000 
tons displacement to insure the transportation 
of food and materials to her ports should her 
coasts be again blocked by another nation’s 
submarines. There was, in short, no end to 
the potentialities of naval development outside 
the functions of capital ships of maritime 
nations elected to make the submarine their 
chief reliance. 

What is abundantly plain at the present 
stage is that Great Britain would never agree 
to France’s submarine tonnage equaling hers, 
and her stand was supported by the United 
States. Both held that France’s allotment 
should be in proportion to her fighting-ship 
tonnage. 

A vague prospect held out for the holding 
of another conference to settle the issue did 
not ease the situation. It is true that the 
shadow of an agreement at a second parley 


306 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

might promote a tendency to deter submarine 
building for fear the new boats would 
eventually be scrapped, like the superfluous 
capital ships named in the Naval Limitation 
Treaty. But if the outlook for a second con¬ 
ference was regarded seriously—which is 
doubtful—its future assembling rather points 
to a stimulus in the construction of new sub¬ 
marine craft. Naval nations would thus be 
able to present a better status quo . The more 
boats they had, the less would their strength 
be weakened by a pro-rata reduction. 

A race for submarine superiority in Europe 
would react upon the naval policy of the 
United States. But our course should not 
await foreign initiative springing from inter¬ 
national rivalries. What we do should be de¬ 
termined by our immediate needs, not by what 
other nations elect to do in a contest of sub¬ 
marine building. 

Our unprotected coasts point to a duty un¬ 
done. Their fixed defenses are almost value¬ 
less against modern armaments. Suppose they 
were reinforced. The organization of a com¬ 
plete manning force to guard our coasts ade¬ 
quately, even without any provision or relief 
details to replace casualties, would demand an 
enormous standing army at a prohibitive cost. 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 307 
Provision for efficient relief would add to the 
cost. Artillerymen, unlike infantrymen, can¬ 
not be trained in a short time; they are a corps 
of experts subject to long periods of prepara¬ 
tion and practice. Under these circumstances 
it is futile to suppose that the fixed defenses of 
the United States could ever be adequately 
equipped to meet the sudden demands of war. 
They must, therefore, be supplemented by 
floating defenses. 

We should have a navy of sufficient size to 
protect every foot-of our coast lines at a mo¬ 
ment’s notice. They are our future coast 
defenses. 

Fixed defenses need not be abolished. Sub¬ 
marines in sufficient number, and adequately 
manned and equipped, would serve as invalu¬ 
able auxiliaries to them. Moreover, they 
would give far greater security than would an 
extension of fixed defenses at the same cost. 

The mobility of the submarine enables it to 
be transferred from one base to another as the 
occasion for defense may arise, and when such 
necessity at one point disappears, the boats can 
be removed to other points. This mobility is 
of the utmost service in connection with tem¬ 
porary defense bases in our island depend¬ 
encies and elsewhere, since such defenses at 


308 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 
these points can be effected without the outlay 
required for permanent defenses, a large part 
of which is lost when the base is abandoned. 
Aside from the question of cost, the rapidity 
with which temporary defenses can be organ¬ 
ized is of vital importance. 

If Congress to-day were to recognize the 
situation and provide enough submarines to 
effect a complete defense of the United States 
and its dependencies at all times, the question 
would arise as to the method of procedure, and 
the type, size, and number of boats necessary. 

The protection of our Atlantic coast from 
Maine to the Florida keys, a distance of nearly 
2,000 miles, would require a minimum of 200 
submarines of our latest designs. The types 
for this service would be, in my opinion, those 
of the S and V classes now building. To repel 
foreign invasion these boats could form a 
double line the entire length of the coast if 
necessary, and operate several hundred miles 
out at sea. They could be quickly massed at 
any one point, if such a concentration were 
necessary. Their commanders, in constant 
touch with airplanes on scout duty, would 
know the exact location and number of hostile 
ships at any time. Probably half this fleet of 
200 boats would suffice on the firing line. The 
remaining half could be held in reserve. 



OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 309 

Numerous shore bases would have to be 
provided at suitable points where the boats 
could be supplied, overhauled, and kept in con¬ 
dition. In addition, the boats could be divided 
into flotillas, each flotilla provided with a sub¬ 
marine mother ship, so that in emergencies the 
actual fighting units could be kept on the firing 
line for days at a time and supplied by the 
mother ships, which would carry necessary 
stores, repairing outfits, and relief crews. 

The use of submarine mother ships, as far 
as I know, has never been developed. Their 
service is quite practical and merits serious 
study, particularly for the undersea protection 
of our west coast and island possessions. If 
one of our modern submarines were to travel 
several thousand miles to provide protection 
at some point, at the end of the trip she would 
have to return to her base for supplies. With 
a supply ship at hand she would save much lost 
motion. 

The conditions of submarine protection for 
our Atlantic seaboard apply to our coast lines 
everywhere. Providing enough submarines 
to carry out the plan of defense outlined for 
all our coasts would require the construction 
of several hundred boats. The question would 
then arise, how can we most economically keep 


310 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

them in condition in peace times ? This should 
not be difficult. Three-fourths of the fleet 
would be tied up and divided into flotillas, each 
flotilla in command of a competent submarine 
officer. He in turn would have under him 
enough submarine experts to keep the boats in 
efficient condition to guard against deteriora¬ 
tion. The number of men needed in each 
flotilla would be comparatively small. 

The remaining fourth of the fleet would be 
kept in commission and actually operated a few 
hours each week. This would keep a certain 
number of men in constant training and ready 
for an emergency. Periodically the boats in 
commission could be tied up and replaced by a 
new group. In this way the whole submarine 
fleet could be kept seaworthy. In case of need 
we would have enough experts to man the fleet 
and every boat without much delay could oper¬ 
ate with the highest efficiency. 

On active service, under war conditions, a 
submarine requires only a few experts. With 
these technicians a full crew could be assem¬ 
bled from civilians and men from the mercan¬ 
tile marine. 

If some of our technical experts would com¬ 
pute the cost of submarine protection as thus 
outlined, and compare the figures with the cost 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 311 

of the same protection from shore defenses, 
battleships, cruisers, destroyers, supply ships, 
etc., I believe the result would be so over¬ 
whelmingly in favor of submarines that Con¬ 
gress would not hesitate to appropriate the 
funds needed. 

This plan is not the result of technical study, 
nor is it a scheme from the brain of a visionary 
inventor. It is the fruit of twenty-five years’ 
experience gained in practical submarine work 
in every part of the world, and under every 
condition met with in undersea navigation, as 
well as of careful observation and frequent 
contact with other submarine technicians. 

For good or ill, the submarine, with its un¬ 
limited potentialities of growth as a war 
weapon, is fated to become the backbone of 
navies. In undersea craft lies our future 
naval development. Unfortunately, one seri¬ 
ous aftermath of the World War is the growth 
of an indifference to our navy. National in¬ 
terest in it has become more than ever lacking 
since the four leading powers agreed upon a 
limitation of capital ships. 

We ought not to forget the lessons learned 
in years past. The folly of unpreparedness 
has cost our nation many billions of hard- 
earned dollars, and taxpayers will be mulcted 


312 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

for many years to pay the price of this short¬ 
sighted policy. Had we taken advantage of 
the knowledge gained from the Spanish- 
American War of 1898, we would have been 
prepared for the battles we were to fight in 
1917. 

When the war with Spain ended, many of 
our substantial citizens settled back in the old 
rut and prophesied that we had fought our last 
war. The Hague Peace Conference promised 
us this, and most of us believed it. To-day our 
Congress likewise believes that we have fought 
our last war and that an army and navy of any 
size is needless. The Secretaries of the Navy 
and of War have vainly recommended the 
maintenance of an adequate military force to 
protect the coasts of the United States. They 
have been supported by General Pershing and 
other army leaders who have seen their com¬ 
rades fall in thousands on European battle¬ 
fields. If these fallen heroes could speak they 
would tell us that preparedness would have 
saved many of them. 

The time is coming when our people will 
heed the lessons learned in the World War, 
for which we paid such a tremendous price. It 
is hard to believe that they will let false ideas 
of economy deter them from recognizing our 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 313 

military needs. The drastic reduction of our 
army by Congress will leave us with hardly 
enough men to police the country in case of 
trouble, much less repel a foreign invasion. 

Our depleted navy is in a like plight. Rein¬ 
forced by ample submarines, its added strength 
would equal the loss it suffered by its sacrifice 
of capital ships. If we do not add materially 
to our undersea fleet we will be jeopardizing 
the security of every American citizen. 

The Conference for the Limitation of Naval 
Armament will have done this country a 
doubtful service, not to say unmeasured harm, 
should its limitation of capital ships lull our 
people into a mistaken sense of security and 
cause them to disregard their duty to our first 
line of defense. The effect of such apathy and 
indifference is at once reflected in a supine 
Congress. Our navy is in danger of degenera¬ 
tion if our people forget that it still exists for 
our protection and fail to demand national 
recognition of its needs. 


Supplementary Chapter 

By 

W. W. Kimball, 

Rear Admiral, U . N. } Retired 

In reading Captain Cable’s excellent book, I 
am impressed by his fairness in giving Holland 
the credit he deserves and as he deserves it. 

My own friendship for Holland began in 
1883 and continued until his death. 

In the early ’eighties, I became interested in 
the submarine question, had seen the design of a 
one man-power boat that Holland submitted to 
the Torpedo Station—there was no Naval War 
College then, nor for some years thereafter— 
and knew in a general way what he had accom¬ 
plished in the Fenian Ram. 

Holland came aboard the flagship of the 
N. A. Station, then alongside the dock in the 
Brooklyn Navy Yard, to dine in response to 
my invitation, and after dinner we went over 
the main principles of his methods for the con¬ 
trol and maneuvering of a submerged craft. 

At that time the more general way of work¬ 
ing a submerged craft in the vertical plane was 
the method of varying the specific gravity of 
the boat, i. e., when it was desired to submerge, 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 315 

water ballast was taken in until the boat was 
slightly heavier than water and she sank below 
the surface; when it was desired to rise, water 
was pumped out until she was lighter than 
water. While she was of about the same weight 
as water, she could be given motion of transla¬ 
tion by her propeller. 

This was the system applied to the French 
submarine Plongeur. Diving rudders were not 
used. The result was that the craft dropped to 
the bottom, bounced from there to the surface, 
and was practically out of control in the vertical 
plane. 

Holland held that a submarine should always 
be lighter than water, should retain what we 
agreed to call “normal buoyancy/’ so that if 
any accident happened to her mechanism she 
Would rise and not sink, should have as nearly 
a£ possible an immovable center of gravity—- 
this to be accomplished by taking in a weight of 
water equal to the weight of any article re¬ 
moved (as when a torpedo was discharged), 
with the center of gravity as nearly as practical 
coinciding with that of the article removed; 
should be steered down, taking down the 
normal buoyancy under the action of her diving 
rudders and the push of her propeller. 

These three requirements—normal buoy- 


316 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

ancy, immovable center of gravity, and control 
in the vertical plane—comprise the basis of 
what years after became known as the Holland 
type of submarines. Of course, we discussed 
many details; as how to get the requisite low 
but safe meta-centric fore-and-aft height, so 
as to make the craft handy on her vertical helm 
and at the same time stable enough to be safe, 
and many others. 

To-day, Holland’s three main principles are 
very simple, very apparent. They were not so 
in 1883. 

Before going to sea on the cruise during 
which I had Holland as a guest at dinner, I had 
given the submarine question a little fillip in the 
Navy Department and Lieutenant F. M. Barber 
had published an Ordnance pamphlet on the 
matter, a pamphlet in which, among other sub¬ 
marine boat designs, Holland’s one-man boat 
was shown. 

At the time Holland was my dinner guest, 
the Fenian Ram had been surreptitiously taken 
from him and he was working at Rowlands in 
developing explosive engines with Bray ton. He 
was most anxious to return to submarine con¬ 
struction. 

Before he left the ship he had agreed that, if 
I could arrange it, he would work on a drafts- 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 317 

man’s pay, in the Bureau of Ordnance, on his 
designs. The Bureau was to indicate the torpedo 
requirements, of which Holland was entirely 
ignorant, and he was to see how he could work 
them in. He was to make a cast-iron contract 
with the Department to receive, if his designs 
proved practical and were adopted, such com¬ 
pensation as a board of officers, appointed by 
the Department, should find fair and just, in 
view of the fact that all expenses of develop¬ 
ment were to be borne by the government. 

If the Department chose to hold the designs 
and inventions secret, the compensation was to 
be greater than it would be if Holland was to 
be free to market his invention outside the De¬ 
partment. Holland was delighted with such a 
prospect. He wished to be of use to the gov¬ 
ernment and felt that he would get fair treat¬ 
ment, fair compensation, and would be spared 
the risk that all inventors run of being squeezed 
out of his fair show of profits when inventions 
are developed by private capital. 

The Chief of Bureau of Ordnance was much 
inclined to make the offer as I had arranged, 
but Congress had adjourned. There was abso¬ 
lutely no money available to pay Holland as a 
draftsman. Had there been, Uncle Sam would 
have been saved many millions and would have 
held the Holland type of submarines, as his pri- 


318 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 


vate property for many years. However, there 
was a hope that the matter might be arranged. 

Holland waited. I was bound away to the 
southward. Just before sailing, Zalinski came 
to me and asked who knew anything about sub¬ 
marines. I told him that Holland was far and 
away the best submarine man in the United 
States, if not in the world, but that he, Zalinski, 
was to keep hands off, as the Navy Department 
might make Holland an offer. Zalinski told me 
that some men with money wished to build a 
submarine and arm her with Zalinski’s guns. I 
assured him that a submarine with torpedo ar¬ 
mament was nonsense and that, anyway, the 
Franco-Chinese War, toward which his money 
men were evidently looking, would be over long 
before a submarine boat could be built and 
launched. Two or three months later, while 
cruising down the Spanish Main, came a letter 
from Holland saying he had waited as long as 
he could for the Navy Department; that he 
would much prefer working on a draftsman’s 
pay for the Department under proposed condi¬ 
tion, to the thousand-dollars-a-month salary as 
president of a building company, offered him 
for some time back; that necessary support for 
his family would not allow a longer wait—and 
so he had gone to work for Zalinski’s company. 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 319 

The following season, when my ship touched 
in at New York, I ran down to Fort La Fayette, 
where the Zalinski company boat was being 
built, to see Holland and have a chat. There was 
much mystery and secrecy at the fort. A canvas 
screen prevented people from seeing what was 
in building. Zalinski was glad to have me 
overhaul the boat and assured me that the 
screen was simply a defense against the new r s- 
reporter nuisance. Holland appeared from the 
bowels of the wooden spindle-of-revolution 
shaped craft on ways in the fort. His face 
was smudged and his brow careworn. 

He confided to me that all that could be 
proved by the craft was that atmospheric air 
at normal pressure and at normal purity could 
be breathed by humans in a boat under water 
just as it could in a room above water; that 
she had no practical propulsive power and no 
real armament; but that the men furnishing the 
money required the air-breathing test. 

Before the boat was launched the Franco- 
Chinese war was over, and when she left the 
almost impossible launching ways from the 
terrain of the fort to the water, she was stove 
and sunk. There was absolutely no submarine 
information obtained from her construction. 
The company that built her faded away. 


320 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

At the end of my cruise, which had been pro¬ 
longed beyond the usual term because a report 
to Congress on the progress of the work on the 
Panama Canal was required to be made by me, 
I found myself, in the latter part of 1886, on 
duty in the Bureau of Ordnance, where lay 
construction of all torpedo craft, and not in 
the Bureau of Construction, where it was 
placed later. The submarine question was 
troublesome. Three or four tentative designs 
had been offered to the Department. Norden- 
feldt was building submarines for Turkey. 
The French were experimenting. Mr. Whitney, 
the Secretary of the Navy, was strong on 
asking bids for all kinds of naval construction 
and supplies. 

I suggested that an easy way to meet the sub¬ 
marine bother was to ask for bids for furnish¬ 
ing a submarine just as bids were asked for 
furnishing shoes or canvas. This was consid¬ 
ered revolutionary and impracticable because 
no one could draw specifications showing the 
requirements of the Department to be met, for 
a useful submarine torpedo boat. 

I agreed to draw such specifications subject 
to approval by the Chief of Ordnance. 

In drawing the specifications, there was a 
hard struggle over requiring the boat to be able 
to remain still, with propeller not turning, at 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 321 

any predetermined depth. I held that this fea¬ 
ture was not necessary, since the boat could be 
held very near any place at any safe depth by 
keeping merely steerage way and moving in a 
circle; that if her power was to be cut off and 
she were allowed to give up her normal buoy¬ 
ancy, she could be balanced within a few feet 
of a desired depth; that if normal buoyancy 
must be maintained and moving power cut off, 
then the only way was to install down-haul 
propellers and engines, which would complicate 
matters sadly. However, the chief was very 
strong for the ability to remain at rest at a 
desired depth and not on the bottom, and so this 
feature went into the specifications. It proved 
to be a troublesome thing in later years. 

Only two designs were offered, both by the 
same company—the Cramps, shipbuilders. The 
designs were those of Holland and Norden- 
feldt. 

An amusing circumstance was that in their 
bid the Cramps put in Holland’s description of 
the ease, certainty, and safety with which a 
submarine could be handled, and then explained 
the high price they set by accentuating the 
danger to their personnel in making trials. 

I said to Charley Cramp: “You seem to wish 
to grab all submarines. You want the earth.” 


322 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

He replied: “Not at all. We want the sea 
only, and all that goes into it.” 

The Naval Board found in favor of the Hol¬ 
land design, but rejected the bids as exorbitant 
in price. It was suggested that the Cramps be 
asked to build the boat at a good shop profit 
and that the dangerous trials be made by navy 
personnel; but Mr. Whitney was very strong 
for requiring bidders to prove that their goods 
were as specified, and so the matter dropped 
with a recommendation by the board that new 
bids be asked for. 

With the change in administration, interest 
in submarine development languished. Corre¬ 
spondence with Holland indicated a gloomy 
outlook. 

However, another competition in designs 
was held, which Holland won, and an appro¬ 
priation of $200,000 made for the construction 
of a submarine boat if the Department desired 
to have one constructed, which it very decidedly 
did not. 

At the end of my next cruise at sea, Holland 
came to me, quite cheerful. He had formed a 
company, his design had won a third competi¬ 
tion, an appropriation of $150,000 had been 
made, and a building contract was in the mak¬ 
ing. I met Holland’s backers and found them 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 323 

to be a prominent estate trust lawyer and a 
cemetery owner and developer. I asked them 
why, in the name of common sense, were they 
going in for submarines when all of us who be¬ 
lieved in them were considered to be pestiferous 
cranks. They told me that they indulged in in¬ 
vention flyers now and again and were much 
impressed by Holland’s directness and apparent 
knowledge of the matter in hand. 

Holland’s accepted design had to be from 
the nature of the case, a sketch design showing 
applications of principles and methods of work¬ 
ing, but not working-drawing dimensions, since 
even the dimensions were not fully decided 
upon. 

Under such circumstances the contract very 
properly required that the details of the work¬ 
ing drawings should be approved by the De¬ 
partment. 

The power for this boat, the ill-fated 
Plunger, was to be steam, the submerged run¬ 
ning to be made from the pressure remaining 
in the boiler after the closing of the furnaces 
as the boat went under. The method was most 
unsatisfactory, but was adopted by Holland as 
the best thing then in sight, and a method that 
had given quite remarkable results abroad. 
Before the boat was launched, electricity was 


324 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

used for auxiliary power and submerged work. 

The steam boiler was a serious handicap, but 
not altogether inadmissible, as were Depart¬ 
mental requirements as to approval of details. 
Because the foolish requirement in regard to 
maintaining a desired depth when at rest had 
teen printed in the first specifications years 
before, it had all the sanctity of things decided 
upon and so went into the Plunger contract. 
This necessitated two propellers mounted in 
sleeves, one forward and the other aft, and two 
engines to operate them in hauling her down 
against her normal buoyancy. They were dis¬ 
tressing things to contemplate. At that time 
twin propellers were replacing single screws in 
surface craft, and “Condor” Charley Beresford 
in England had set the fashion of twin-torpedo 
tubes on surface torpedo-boat decks. 

When Holland asked the Bureau of Steam 
Engineering what propulsion would be ap¬ 
proved for the Plunger, he was told that twin 
screws must be installed, whatever else. He 
explained that he had to have a propeller in the 
axis of the spindle-of-revolution shaped boat to 
push her under and to push her up, and if com¬ 
pelled to install twin screws in addition with 
their engines, that there would be great and 
unnecessary complications. He was told that 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 325 

that was a matter for him to meet, but that she 
must have twin propellers. 

Then he asked the Bureau of Ordnance 
what torpedo-tube installation would be ap¬ 
proved. He was informed that two torpedo 
tubes were required. He explained that put¬ 
ting in a single tube was difficult in view of the 
shape of the bow, and that two eighteen-inch 
tubes would destroy her bow lines. Twin tubes 
were declared to be absolutely necessary. So 
Holland sorrowfully went to work to get those 
requirements into his working plans. 

A short time after these requirements were 
made, I met the director of Holland's company 
and told him that in my opinion the Plunger 
had been made an utter failure. She should 
have, for the sake of the simplicity so necessary 
in all untried mechanisms, one propeller and 
one engine. She was required to have five 
propellers and five engines. She should have 
one torpedo tube, or better none at all, until 
the underwater control had been proved out; 
she had to have two. She could not possibly 
function with all that complication aboard and 
would better be given up. 

I expressed the opinion that the only prac¬ 
tical thing to do, provided the company had the 
necessary pluck and the more necessary money, 


326 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

was to build a boat of their own and demon¬ 
strate what she could do. Holland agreed with 
me as to the necessity for private construction, 
but thought that there would be enough infor¬ 
mation obtained from the Plunger in under¬ 
water work to warrant continuing work on her. 
He asked me to lend a hand in designing, es¬ 
pecially as to military features, which I agreed 
to do, and the company decided to build a boat 
of their own at Nixon’s yard, knowing that 
Nixon would keep the cost down as low as pos¬ 
sible. So the building of the Holland was de¬ 
cided upon. Storage batteries had been devel¬ 
oped far enough to indicate electric drive for 
submerged work. A lot of contrivances were 
devised which were never used. 

The question of holding a course at a pre¬ 
meditated depth was unsolved, and therefore an 
automatic arrangement for steering in the ver¬ 
tical plane on the principle of that used in tor¬ 
pedoes was worked out. The bugaboo of venti¬ 
lation was met by managing to keep the boat 
constantly ventilated at normal air pressure. 
This consisted of a delicate reducing valve on 
a compressed-air flask and a small electric- 
driven pump for pumping air out of the boat. 
When the craft submerged, the pump auto¬ 
matically started. When the air pressure fell 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 327 

below normal, corresponding to the pressure to 
raise water one inch, a pet cock on the com¬ 
pressed air opened and through the reducing 
valve air at normal pressure flowed into the 
boat and the exhaust pump was stopped. When 
under supply of air from the flask, the air pres¬ 
sure in the boat was raised above normal, the 
air supply from the flask was cut off, and the 
exhaust pump started. In this way ventilation 
at normal air pressure was to be secured. 

Neither of these devices was used, for the 
reason that, as Captain Cable shows, there was 
no difficulty about steering by hand, in the ver¬ 
tical plane, and no trouble about air supply for 
breathing. 

Before the Holland was off the stocks the 
war with Spain was looming—all the causes of 
that war were as exigent in the fall of 1886 as 
they were later—and I was very anxious to 
have an air gun installed for use in dropping 
high explosive shells into the Morro at Havana. 
We did not know how to use high explosives 
with gunpowder propulsion in those days. 
The air gun was not very much in the way in 
the boat, and so it was installed. 

As the building of the Holland progressed, I 
kept the run of things by visiting Nixon’s 
yard now and again until my time for sea serv- 


328 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

ice came around, and in the spring of 1897 I 
sailed in command of our first torpedo-boat 
flotilla. 

Touching in at New York after the Spanish 
War, I found Holland and Captain Cable try¬ 
ing out the Holland in New York Harbor as 
described by Captain Cable. The Holland 
company was at the end of its tether financially 
and were negotiating with Mr. Rice for neces¬ 
sary capital. Mr. Rice asked me what chance 
there was for the future of submarines. I told 
him that the Navy Department was opposed to 
them, that Great Britain in her own interests 
was bound to hold them back, but that every 
navy would have to have them eventually, es¬ 
pecially small navies; that I knew nothing about 
money, as I never had any, but if he wanted to 
take a long chance, it seemed to me that a dip 
into submarines was a good gamble. 

He decided to finance the company. The 
Holland demonstrated her capabilities. The 
Navy Department took less interest in her than 
none at all. 

Before sailing on a surveying job in Nica¬ 
ragua, I told Mr. E. B. Frost, who bore all the 
heat and burden of the financial end of the Hol¬ 
land boat's development, that the thing to do 
was to ask the Department to define the re- 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 329 

quirements of a practical submarine torpedo 
boat, then to practice with the Holland till 
meeting those requirements would be certain, 
then to ask for a trial board, the favorable re¬ 
port of which would give the submarine a real 
status. 

Mr. Frost said: “Good Lord! If we ask 
what the boat should do, they will tell us she 
must climb a tree!” However, the require¬ 
ments were asked and the Department made 
such that, at home and abroad, they were con¬ 
sidered quite impossible of fulfillment. I hap¬ 
pened to know who made the requirements and 
why they were made. In requiring what was 
considered to be an impossibility in submerged 
running and in holding an under-water course 
with the difficulties arising from unreliable 
compass indications, the real test of a subma¬ 
rine in offshore work, which would have been 
most difficult for the Holland, was entirely 
neglected. 

Holland was confident that his boat could 
meet the tests. I told him to pick out a place 
where the water was not so deep but that the 
crew could come up if the boat broke down and 
sank, and have her do the requirements again 
and again before asking for the official trial. 

There were plenty of places up Gardner’s 


330 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

Bay that, in my opinion, would answer for prac¬ 
tice courses. Peconic Bay was selected and 
the practices held as Captain Cable describes. 

The official trial resulted in a report from a 
board of officers of the highest professional 
standing—Captains F. Rodgers and R. D. 
Evans were on the board—that the Holland 
had met all the Department's requirements for 
an efficient submarine torpedo boat. 

She had. She had made what had been con¬ 
sidered an impossible submerged run. She had 
not been called upon to show what she could do 
in offshore service. 

When my cruise was up early in 1900, I 
found myself on shore duty at the Washington 
Navy Yard. 

Frost came to me and said: “Under your 
advice we asked for requirements. It took a 
pretty penny to meet them. You told me that 
an official report would give us a status. We 
must have the approval of our own country in 
the shape of an order for boats before we can 
do business. We have the finest report what¬ 
ever. We have the status you talked about, 
but we don’t get any indications that we will 
ever get any orders for boats from the navy. 
The Department is as much down on us as ever. 
Our business is building and selling boats. We 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 331 

are going to send the Holland to Washington 
and make her lobby for an appropriation from 
Congress.” 

I was forced to acknowledge that the logic 
of events seemed to prove that my advice was 
not so very valuable, but that, after all, a status 
was a status. 

Captain Cable has graphically described the 
trials and tribulations connected with the Hol¬ 
land's work in the Potomac. 

Meantime the Holland Company had asked 
Congress for an appropriation for submarines. 

Hearings were held by the Naval Commit¬ 
tees of both Houses. Holland, under examina¬ 
tion, told his story to the Senate Naval Com¬ 
mittee. Three chiefs of the bureaus having to 
do with construction controverted Holland’s 
statements and showed that submarines when 
not death traps, were toys, and that they were 
to be carefully avoided. The committee called 
me before it. When a congressional committee 
calls on naval officers, the Department directs 
them to express their opinions if asked for 
them. I expressed mine. They ran directly 
counter to most of those of the three chiefs of 
bureaus who had given theirs, and the commit¬ 
tee was most polite in expressing interest in my 
statements. Seven boats were appropriated 


332 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

for by Congress, boats which were neither 
asked for nor desired by the Department. 

As a junior commander in the navy, contro¬ 
verting the opinions of my superiors before the 
Senate Naval Committee flattered my egoism 
and was most amusing and interesting, but it 
was far from the course of wisdom in pursu¬ 
ing a naval career. 

During the working out of the construc¬ 
tional details of the seven boats of the Adder 
class by the company’s staff, Holland was ill 
and unable to give them his personal super¬ 
vision. The consequence was that errors crept 
in militating against the efficiency of the craft, 
errors that Captain Cable had to meet and cor¬ 
rect as he shows in his narrative. 

About this time, Mr. Rice, the president of 
the company, was going to Europe to sell boats, 
and asked my opinion as to where his market 
lay. With impressive accentuation and a per¬ 
fectly good line of reasoning, I clearly showed 
him that he should keep away from Great 
Britain, since her policy must be to exert all her 
naval prestige to hold back the development of 
submarines; that the submarine was the arm 
of weak navies and that therefore he should 
seek his market in the small countries. 

He went to England, remained there two or 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 333 

three months, investigated no other market, 
and came back with an order for five boats for 
the British Admiralty. 

My very exact knowledge of foreign naval 
policies must have had a kink in it somewhere. 

However, the German navy at this period 
was dead sure that submarines were imprac¬ 
ticable, dangerous and useless. A Counselor of 
the German Empire, who was a naval archi¬ 
tect by trade, read a paper before the Society 
of Naval Architects in Berlin or Kiel, wherein 
he showed that if, when submerged, a sub¬ 
marine from movements of crew or other 
weights, became down by the head a bit, she 
was bound to go down and down until the pres¬ 
sure of water squeezed her flat and removed 
all thickness dimensions from the bodies of her 
wretched crew. 

The Holland was trimmed a few degrees by 
the head and Captain Cable held her, on a run, 
within a foot of the desired depth. 

The German scientist forgot diving-rudder 
effect and the stability of motion, which, in the 
light of what Germans did with submarines in 
the war of the German aggression, seems a bit 
curious. 

During the term of the Naval War College 
at Newport following my testifying before the 


334 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

Senate Naval Committee, there was much dis¬ 
cussion of the usefulness of submarines. In 
lectures, I very clearly, and most satisfactorily 
to myself, showed their great tactical and stra¬ 
tegic value and asserted the dogma that in the 
presence of efficient submarines the then legal 
blockades could not exist; that a boat capable 
of movement in three dimensions possessed cer¬ 
tain great advantages over craft moving in only 
two dimensions. 

Other officers, in lectures, demonstrated that 
things were quite the other way about and that 
efficient submarines could never exist. 

For me, the obvious was about to happen. 
While I had been given perfect freedom to ex¬ 
press my opinions before the Senate Naval 
Committee, it was irritating to the three chiefs 
of bureaus, whom I had directly contradicted, 
to have such opinions lying about, especially as 
there seemed to be some connection between 
these opinions and an appropriation for utterly 
undesired submarines. 

A dear old shipmate expressed the thought 
that what was coming to me for making myself 
a nuisance as a submarine crank was bound to 
come. It was. 

And so, in 1901, on Christmas Eve, when the 
home influences are so sweet, I found myself 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 335 

boarding a ship and headed for the fair South 
Seas, where I could commune with the beauties 
of nature and ponder upon the unwisdom of 
kicking against the pricks of superior authority. 

After seventeen years of futile fussing with 
the development of submarines and just as real 
development was beginning, my connection 
with it fell with a dull, sickening thud. It was 
all in the day’s work in our service. 

Holland was always irritated about the 
errors in the Adder class designs and about 
1904 hauled out of the Holland company. He 
turned his attention to flying. He was one of 
the first to appreciate the sustension, due to 
rarefaction on the upper side of wing or plane, 
and made considerable progress toward prac¬ 
tical applications of the principle. For ten 
years, off and on, in correspondence and at 
meetings, I worked with him on the flying 
schemes. Many an hour have I held a stop 
watch on great gulls, frigate birds, booby birds 
and albatross, trying to get data for Holland as 
to how those birds developed rarefaction on the 
upper sides of their wings. He was delighted 
with some figures obtained from pelicans. He 
wished an example of a heavy bird taking the 
air from rest or from a slow motion of transla¬ 
tion, directly from the surface of the water. 


336 THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT 

The way a pelican gets rarefaction over the 
wing by cramping the primary feathers and 
forming a current of air over herself before the 
lazy thing would try to rise was of the utmost 
interest to him. 

However, he could never find nor design a 
suitable motor, and when an inventor showed 
him the design of what seemed to be an efficient 
motor and a method of producing real rare¬ 
faction, Holland said that the methods were 
superior to his and proceeded to smash his own 
flying machine with an axe. 

During the thirty years in which I knew 
Holland, I knew him as a man with a wonder¬ 
ful nose for smelling out basic mechanical prin¬ 
ciples, with a great capacity for practically 
applying those principles, and with a bulldog 
tenacity in hanging on and making things work 
under discouraging conditions. 

He was most appreciative, even when one 
wished to lend him a hand and really did 
nothing of the sort. 

It was this generous appreciativeness that 
made him write of me to a certain great person¬ 
age—a writing of which I am the prouder 
because it is so far from true—“He has done 
more for submarining than any other living 
man” 


OF THE AMERICAN SUBMARINE 337 

He was a fair fighter, a most interesting and 
amusing companion, the stanchest of friends. 
God rest his soul. 

W. W. Kimball 

THE END 


-X 1944 



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